Work Text:
The sky is yellow.
The air outside feels thick, heavy—Annabeth knows Virginia storms, but this one feels different. Fireflies flit through the trees, casting light on the glinting eyes of the owl that perches outside her window and stares at her every night. It never moves—silent, piercing, an odd paradox of disinterest and watchfulness.
The earth rumbles and the summer storm breaks, lightning flashing across the sky’s reflection in the owl’s eyes.
Annabeth jumps at a loud knock on her door. Matthew and Bobby, her stepbrothers, tumble in. They rocket around her room, shrieking and knocking into things. Annabeth races behind them, catching things as they fall, and eventually stops with her hands on her hips. “Stop it!” she demands.
“No fun, Annabeth,” Matthew sulks.
“You’re gonna break my stuff!”
“Yeah, no fun,” Bobby agrees. “What is this, anyway?” He fiddles with a glass owl statue on her desk.
“Please don’t do that,” she says, starting forward.
“Can we use this?” Matthew asks, peering through her magnifying glass.
“No! Last time you used my stuff, you broke it,” Annabeth says, snatching it out of his hands.
“Hey! Mom said we can use it.”
“Amaya said you could ask, not that you could have it.”
“Just give it,” Bobby insists.
“Dad gave this to me,” she protests.
“But we’re just going to borrow it,” Matthew pesters, backing her up against her desk in front of the window.
“You can’t just have something because you want it!”
“Come on, Annabeth,” Bobby whines, grabbing at her.
“I said no !” she shouts, and there’s a crash . She whips around to find the window shattered—the owl swoops through and hoots, flapping its wings at Matthew and Bobby. The boys scream, running out of her room. Annabeth slowly sets the magnifying glass down. The owl narrows its eyes, timed with a clap of thunder, and gently pecks her hand. It hops to her window and leaves, hooting as it glides off into the rain.
Annabeth doesn’t think she’s ever been this confused.
—
“Annabeth?”
She looks up from her desk with a pencil sticking out of her hair and her mouth clamped around a tube of glue.
“I—what are you doing?” Her dad looks bemused, his glasses sliding down his nose.
“You said your planes broke, so I wanted to help!” Annabeth chirps, showing him a small model plane.
Her dad stares at her, not saying a word. Annabeth’s smile slowly slides off her face.
“Do you—do you not like it?”
“It’s… nice.”
Annabeth puts the plane down.
“I was coming to tell you that we’re getting a dog,” he says, his eyes trained on the miniature plane.
“Really?”
“Yes. We’ll go to adopt it soon, and then we’ll be taking it to obedience school. You, Matthew, and Bobby will help Amaya and me train the dog.”
“Will they… will the boys talk to me, maybe?”
Her dad pauses. “Have they not been?”
“No, but—”
“What did you do?” he cuts in.
“I didn’t—”
“Did you scare them again?”
“No!”
“Annabeth.”
“I didn’t do anything!”
Her dad sighs. “Please try to behave for a little while.” He stares at the planes as he leaves, his forehead furrowed.
Annabeth sits on her bed until dinnertime, snapping the model planes apart bit by bit.
—
“Sit!” the dog trainer commands, dangling a toy above the puppy’s head. She’s a Doberman—Annabeth recognizes the characteristically thin snout from the books she read on dog training—and the cutest dog Annabeth’s ever seen. Annabeth was allowed to name the puppy, so she’s named her Cleo.
Annabeth sits on a bench, her dog book in her lap, and watches her dad play with the puppy and her stepbrothers. He’s having fun, laughing and ruffling Matthew’s hair as Bobby wrestles with Cleo.
He doesn’t look at Annabeth.
“Hi! My name’s Lily.” She looks up to see the dog trainer lady crouching in front of her.
“I’m Annabeth.”
“Would you like to come over and play with Cleo? I noticed you haven’t had much time to help train her.”
Annabeth nods.
Lily leads her over to a basket filled with dog toys. “Pick one that you like,” she offers. Annabeth grabs a rubber ball. “Now, get Cleo’s attention.”
“Cleo!” Annabeth calls quietly. She bounds over, panting.
“Tell her to sit.”
“Sit,” Annabeth says, more of a question than a command.
“A little more confidence.”
“Sit!”
Cleo plops down and cocks her head to the side. “Good girl,” Annabeth coos, and gently gives her the ball. Cleo holds the ball in her mouth and trots over, laying down on Annabeth’s lap with a happy bark.
“Perfect!” Lily says, grinning at her. “Looks like your dog research paid off.”
Annabeth chats with her about books for a while, and she wonders why a complete stranger talks to her more than her dad does.
—
Tap, tap, tap.
Annabeth grumbles and turns over, pulling the blanket over her head.
Another series of tap, tap, taps, louder this time.
She wiggles to the edge of her bed, dangling her feet until they touch the floor. She stops in front of the window—there’s another owl, but this one is different, brown spots speckled around its beak that look just like her freckles. The owl gives an insistent peck to the glass.
Annabeth opens the window and ducks as the owl flaps in with a small hoot. It tilts its head at her. What could it want? Annabeth isn’t sure, but she doesn’t think that owls frequently come into humans’ houses to stare at them.
Hopping to the end of her bed, the owl fluffs its feathers—except it’s suddenly not an owl anymore, twisting and stretching into a tall woman with stony eyes and curly hair twisted into a bun.
She can’t think of what to say for a moment, too many questions exploding in her brain, so she blurts out the first thing to come to mind. “You’re not an owl?”
The woman seems surprised, the corner of her mouth curling up into a half-smile. “No, it appears that I am not.”
“So… who are you?”
“I am your mother, child.”
“You’re magic?” Annabeth asks, tracing her fingers across the woman’s shimmering golden skirt.
“I am a goddess, technically, but yes.”
“Why… why did it take you so long to visit me? My dad’s told me about you, but he never said why you weren’t here.”
“I am busy, Annabeth. A goddess has many responsibilities.”
Athena doesn’t look much like what Annabeth thought mothers were like—she’s seen how Amaya looks at Matthew and Bobby, hugging them with just her eyes, but Athena feels more like a glare than a hug.
“Oh.”
Athena sweeps around Annabeth’s room, inspecting it. She stops at a framed family picture, picks it up. Her eyebrows wrinkle. “Who is this?” she asks, pointing to Annabeth’s stepmom.
“That’s Amaya. She’s Matthew and Bobby’s mom.” Athena’s hands tense.
“A mortal,” Athena mutters. “You chose a mortal, Frederick.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
Athena looks her over, eyes calculating. “She’ll never truly love you.”
“What?” Annabeth sits down on her bed.
“Amaya. She’ll always care more about them than you.”
“I—”
“The same has already happened with your father, and it will with your stepbrothers. They are connected, bound together by choice rather than by force of family ties like you and your father. He didn’t want you when I gave you to him, you know. He would rather have his perfect mortal family than a blessed demigod child.”
“You—you’re wrong,” Annabeth denies. “I’m part of the family, too.”
“Are you?”
Annabeth can’t think. Her brain feels like it’s twisted into knots, snarled beyond repair. Matthew and Bobby running away, her stepmother barely able to look at her, her dad not even remembering that she’s there.
“They will not be able to handle your legacy, your enemies. Being the child of a god is a blessing, Annabeth, but it is also perilous. You cannot be close with anyone, become attached to anyone, because you will put them in danger by being near them. You cannot cause others to suffer for your want of a family, even if you attempt to create one yourself. Your gifts and curses are yours to bear, alone.”
“They love me,” Annabeth insists. “I can protect them, keep them safe.” She doesn’t know who she’s trying to convince: Athena, or herself.
“You will see, Annabeth,” Athena murmurs. Her name in Athena’s mouth sounds heavy, a foretelling of prophecies to come and promises to be broken. She picks up a spool of yellow thread. “What do you use this for?”
Annabeth doesn’t answer for a minute.
“Your thread?” Athena prompts.
“I make bracelets,” Annabeth says hesitantly. “Would you like to see them?”
“Why do you make… bracelets?”
“I read that you like to weave things, so I thought I’d try. Maybe one day I could be as good as you, or even better?”
Athena’s face turns cold. “Better?”
“I’ve been learning,” she rambles nervously. “My dad doesn’t have much time, but sometimes he finds me books so I can learn new patterns, and—”
“Annabeth.”
She stops. “What?”
“My children learn; they seek knowledge, they practice, they create. But they do not attempt to best me. You know the story of Arachne, child.”
Annabeth shivers.
“Continue your weaving, if you wish.” Athena twists Annabeth’s thread around her slim fingers. “Perhaps one day you may visit me on Olympus.”
“Visit? You… you’re not staying?”
Athena examines Annabeth: her messy blonde hair, her owl-patterned shirt, her too-short pajama bottoms. She doesn’t pause. “No.”
She’s gone the next second, in a flash of light that hurts Annabeth’s eyes. Smoke curls from a small lump on the carpet. It’s her weaving thread—tangled in knots and burnt to a crisp.
Annabeth never wants to see another owl again.
—
It seems that Athena heard Annabeth’s last wish, because the owl hasn’t visited for weeks. Matthew and Bobby still won’t talk to her, her dad is always working, and Amaya looks pained whenever she sees her, like Annabeth’s disappointed her without even knowing how. Annabeth just stays in her room, playing with Cleo, and tries not to cry when the boys run away from her or when her father doesn’t speak to her for days.
Maybe Athena was right.
The sky is especially dark tonight, so dark that the night seems to cloak her eyes. Crickets chirp in the distance, strangely muffled, like they’re being swallowed up by the darkness too.
Annabeth lies in her bed, Cleo curled up next to her, and tries to fall asleep. Cleo’s snoring, a light rumble in her tiny chest. Annabeth can feel her breath—it puffs across her face and makes her curls tickle her forehead.
Just as she starts to feel that heavy, drifting feeling right before sleep, Cleo sits bolt upright on the bed. Annabeth jumps, straining her eyes to see Cleo’s face in the darkness. The shadows have gotten deeper, almost like a web spun across her eyes. She bites her lip.
She hears it when Cleo does: a scuttling, whispering sound on the hardwood floor. A touch on her left arm—the breeze? Please, let it be a breeze. The feeling continues up toward her neck. She’s silent, fingers twisted in Cleo’s fur.
Another brush of her hair against her forehead—she reaches up to brush it away and chokes in a rasping gasp when her hand comes back sticky with web. The feeling is everywhere, now. Feet, legs, arms, head. There’s so many that she can feel them through her flannel pajama bottoms, hundreds of spindly legs scampering across her body.
Arachne’s children.
Cleo’s snapping at them—she knows something’s wrong, can feel how absolutely petrified Annabeth is. She’s whining quietly, a little what’s wrong, make it stop, are you okay?
Is this her punishment for the way she spoke to her mother?
Please, she begs, please make it stop. I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean to be rude—just make them go away, please.
One crawls across her face, all eight legs scratching across her skin. It slips on the tears pouring out of her eyes and lands on her ear. She lets out a whimper, frantically batting at her hair. Cleo puts her paws on Annabeth’s lap, gently licking her face to snap her out of her panic, and then pointedly jumps off the bed. Annabeth follows, dazedly stumbling downstairs. Lights flicker in the living room—her stepmother is on the couch.
“Annabeth?” Amaya asks, sitting up. “Did you wake the boys up?”
“I—no.” It feels like a slap in the face, her not noticing the tears smeared on her cheeks. She swallows hard.
“I—I need—” She’s shaking so hard that she can’t even talk. She suddenly wants nothing more than to hide under the blanket next to her stepmother, if she’d let her. Maybe the spiders won’t come again, but even if they did, she’d be able to handle them if only because she wouldn’t have to be alone.
“Are you okay?” Amaya asks.
“Can I talk to Dad?”
“Your father is away.”
“Could—could you call him?”
“He’s busy with work.”
“I just—I just need to talk to him, there’s spiders everywhere and I can’t—I can’t sleep.”
“Spiders?”
“They’re all over my bedroom,” Annabeth hiccups. “They’re crawling on me, and biting me, and I can’t—they won’t go away.”
“Let me see the bites.”
Annabeth walks into the light, pulls up her sleeve—
The bites are gone.
Her stepmother’s eyes narrow. “Go back to sleep, Annabeth. Don’t wake up your brothers.”
“They’re not my brothers,” Annabeth mutters, wiping away tears. “They won’t even talk to me.”
“Perhaps because you make things up to scare them,” her stepmother snaps. “Goodnight, Annabeth.”
“Goodnight.”
—
It hurts the most when she says goodbye to Cleo.
Annabeth crouches in front of her open window, a breeze playing through Cleo’s fur. She hugs her gently, burying her sniffles in Cleo’s furry neck. Cleo licks her ear and whines when Annabeth pulls back. She tugs on Annabeth’s shoe with her teeth.
Cleo is the only one that wants her to stay. The spiders never stop; she writhes in bed every night, pricking bites all over her body, and scrubs off wads of webbing in the morning before anyone can see. She’s tried to tell her dad, tell Amaya, but they won’t believe her. The bites disappear before morning, and she just looks like a liar.
Maybe she deserves it. She’s caused it, really—she knew what happened to Arachne.
She kisses Cleo’s head and clambers out of her window. Plaintive howls echo through the neighborhood as she walks across the driveway, tears streaming down her face.
Annabeth’s made the same mistake Arachne did.
Never try to be better than her.
—
Being on the run is not as fun as it sounds in adventure books.
Annabeth’s barely been on her own for long, and she’s already exhausted. The spiders still haven’t gone away; they follow her at night, swarming out of alleyways, always on her heels. There’s been a new something chasing her, too, something that breathes heavily and crashes through the trees. She’s too scared to look back, too scared that if she sees it, it’ll be real.
Rain’s pouring down, and Annabeth trips on a cobblestone. She crashes to her knees in a puddle. She tries to get up and slips again, her backpack falling to the stone beside her. Picking it up quickly, she peers inside, searching for leftover food or supplies.
It’s completely empty.
Her eyes fog over, and she starts sobbing, tears running down her face faster than the rain. She drags herself up, dripping wet. An alleyway’s right next to her, a battered cloth awning at the end near some stacked crates. She creeps down the alley and pulls together a haphazard shelter—when she huddles inside, she can almost pretend she’s back in her bedroom, constructing a carefully-planned blanket fort for her and Cleo.
She stiffens. A clatter sounds, two pairs of footsteps coming toward her. Eyes darting, she frantically scrounges around on the ground. Her hand brushes against a hammer behind a crate, and she clutches it in her fist like a mace.
Someone tears away the front of her shelter—she lets a shriek rip out of her throat as she throws herself forward, swinging wildly with the hammer. “No more! ” she screams, her hair flying in her face. “No more monsters, please, go away,” she sobs, making out a flash of blonde hair and a silver shield that wrenches a twisting, horrible terror into her chest.
Someone grabs her wrist hard enough to shock the hammer out of her hand. She goes limp, dragging herself to her knees. The person grunts, almost tipping over—she darts up, rams her head into their chin, and starts careening down the alleyway. “Wait!” someone shouts, and a gleaming, bronze blade is thrown to the ground at her feet. “Hey, hang on,” they say, soothing.
Annabeth turns slowly, fist clutching her backpack and ready to swing. Light shines from the knife on the ground, glowing softly and casting shadows across the faces of two kids—big kids, like the ones who got extra library time at school. The one on the left is frozen, holding a silver shield in one hand and brushing her black, choppy hair out of her eyes with her other hand. A boy is standing next to her, panting. He’s the one that tossed the knife down.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” he says quietly. “Hey, Thalia, can you put your shield away?” he mutters to the girl. She taps her wrist, and the shield whirs as it collapses into a delicate silver bracelet.
“You’re monsters,” Annabeth asserts, watching them carefully.
“No, but we know about monsters,” the girl counters. “We fight them, too.”
“How old are you?” the boy asks, straightening.
“Seven.”
The girl grabs the boy’s arm, tapping a pattern on the inside of his elbow. Annabeth edges toward the knife, ready for one of them to turn on her. The boy moves and she jumps, prepped to run, but he slides the knife closer to her. “What’s your name?”
“Annabeth.”
“Okay, Annabeth, how about this,” he says, giving a squeeze to the other girl’s hand. “You’re fierce, and scarily skilled with just a hammer,” he chuckles. “Thalia and I have been looking for someone to help us fight. How about you come with us, and I’ll teach you how to use a knife?”
“I already know how,” she fires back.
“I’m sure,” he laughs. “Knives are pretty tricky to use, though—there’s an art to good knife fighting. You seem like you’re smart, and I bet that you like learning, right?”
“Yes!” Annabeth grins.
“Perfect.” He flashes her a smile and takes her hand, curling her fingers around the knife hilt.
“Luke and I are going to get some clothes and food,” Thalia says. “Would you like to come with us, Annabeth?”
She tightens her grip on the knife. Thalia is watching Luke, her eyes soft, but Luke is watching Annabeth.
“You won’t take me back home?” she asks finally, testing them.
Luke pauses. “No,” he promises. “You’re part of our family, now. Thalia and I won’t let anything hurt you.”
“Okay.” Annabeth nods, letting out a cautious smile. “Where are we going first?”
“We’re headed to a place that I know pretty well,” Luke answers, helping her stand up.
“Let’s get going!” Thalia says, giving Annabeth’s hair a gentle ruffle as she passes by.
Maybe, just this once, Athena could be wrong about family. Maybe Annabeth could get another chance.
—
“Was that your dad?” Annabeth asks, trudging along behind Luke and Thalia. Usually they don’t mind answering questions, but Thalia gives Annabeth a look and Luke seems upset, so she decides not to ask anything else.
Thalia’s been acting strange ever since they left Luke’s house, and Annabeth can’t figure out why. She hadn’t thought the place was that bad—sure, the lady had really green eyes sometimes, and her voice was weird, but she made nice cookies and she loved Luke, so Annabeth knows she must be good.
“This looks like it’s safe enough,” Thalia decides, pointing to an alcove in an alley. “You two stay here. I’ll go find some food.”
She touches Luke on the shoulder and gives him an odd look before she leaves. Annabeth flops down. Luke slowly sits next to her. She pulls her knife out of her pack, fiddling with it as she thinks.
“How could she just leave?” Annabeth wonders, fingers skimming over the blade. She winces a little when she gets a cut, but she’s too focused on watching Luke to care much.
“Who?” Luke asks absentmindedly, taking the blade and digging through his pack for a bandage.
“My mom.”
Luke stiffens. He looks like her dad when she came home from her first day of second grade. He’d tried to hide it—he perked up when she got into the car, asked her questions, but she’d seen his face through the car window before he knew she’d seen him. It was the same expression he wore when he flicked open his wallet and stared at the picture of Athena: resigned, disappointed, mourning a person who’d barely had time to exist.
“I don’t know, ‘Beth,” Luke says through a sigh. “The gods seem to do that—leave. It’s their favorite hobby, I guess.”
“Hobby?” Annabeth asks, her eyes flickering down to Luke’s hand, carefully wrapping a bandage around her finger.
“Like—like a fun thing to do, when you have extra time.”
“So, like how your mom collects those stuffed animals?”
Luke freezes, his hands hovering above her wrist and a strange expression flashing across his face. It scares her a little—it’s dark, scary, not the Luke that she knows. “Yeah, sure,” he forces out.
“I think I had a hobby,” Annabeth says, nervous. “I used to make bracelets. Dad said it would help me make friends, so I gave them to Matthew and Bobby, but they wouldn’t wear them.”
Annabeth suddenly moves, digging into the pocket of the oversized jean jacket Thalia gave her. She pulls out two of her old, faded friendship bracelets and clutches them like a weapon. “You could have one, if you wanted?” she offers shyly.
Luke stares at her, hesitating. “I made this one for my mom,” she says, tapping the bracelet with a clumsy owl pattern, “but she never took it, so I guess it’s not good enough. I get it if you don’t want it—it’s messy, and the colors aren’t right, but I only had three kinds of thread, so it’s ugly—”
Luke startles, shaking his head. “Hey, ‘Beth, it’s not ugly at all,” he argues gently. “I think that’s the coolest owl I’ve ever seen.”
Annabeth’s mouth snaps shut.
He likes it?
“I’d be honored to wear it,” Luke continues. “Would you mind helping me put it on?”
Annabeth blinks and fumbles with the bracelet, wrapping her tiny fingers around Luke’s wrist and tying a chunky knot. She looks up at him, a hesitant smile growing on her face. Luke grins at her. “Thank you,” he says seriously. “I love it.”
He jumps when Annabeth lurches toward him, wrapping her arms around his waist in a clumsy hug. She feels warm and safe, huddled in his jacket, and she can feel one of his hands lightly stroking her tangled hair. She remembers that this is what it’s like to have someone who loves you, someone who makes up a family—Luke’s hugs, Thalia’s hair-scruffles.
If this is her second chance at family, then Annabeth will never let it go.
—
“Go, go!” Thalia yells, pulling Annabeth along by the arm. She trips, unable to keep up, and crashes to her knees. Luke skids to a halt, hoisting Annabeth up and cradling her in his arms as he passes Thalia and Grover.
“I’ve got her, come on,” he wheezes, tearing around the corner. Annabeth can hear the monsters behind them, scales scraping and lumbering footsteps hitting the ground hard enough to make her teeth clack.
Luke’s slowing down, falling behind. Thalia looks back at him with an expression of pure terror on her face, calculating how they can possibly make it out of this.
Annabeth’s never seen Thalia scared before.
Grover’s frantically playing his reed pipes, heaving in breaths between notes as his hooves skitter on the slick grass. A few weak weeds struggle out of the soil, but he’s too scared to do anything else.
Annabeth can barely see a foot ahead of them—the darkness has gotten thicker since they got to Long Island, howling echoing through the fog and slamming into her ears. Luke squeezes her closer to his chest. “I can run,” she says.
“I’m good, ‘Beth,” he pants.
“I can do it,” she insists. “I’m too heavy for you.”
“No,” he snaps. “I’m not risking your life like that.”
The heavy air suddenly tingles with energy, and a thunderous crack of lightning splits the night, silhouetting the top of the hill. “We’re almost there,” Grover calls, desperate. “Come on, we can make it!”
“They’re too close!” Thalia counters, looking behind them. Annabeth glances back and almost screams—hordes of monsters are right there, almost on them. “We won’t get there in time,” Thalia yells. “They’re too fast.”
Annabeth sees Thalia’s face change, her eyebrows furrowing and the set of her mouth hardening. She can feel when Luke sees it, too—his arms clench around her tighter, and he shakes his head furiously. “No, Thalia,” he argues, his voice shaking. “You can’t—”
“I have to,” she shoots back. “There’s no other way.”
“I’ll go with you—Grover can take care of Annabeth, they’ll be fine—”
“Luke, I need you to take care of her. Get her to safety, and yourself and Grover too.”
“Thalia, please,” he pleads. “I can’t lose you, too—please don’t make me lose you.”
She stops, grabbing his shoulder. “You’re not,” she promises. “This is my gift to you—a life to make for yourself, a way to be happy and find a family. You can do it, Luke,” she insists. “You will do it.”
“Thalia—”
She leans forward, gives him a quick hug. “And you, Annabeth.” She laughs. “You’re going to be the smartest ever, kid. You’re bold, and brave, and absolutely kick-ass.” She grins. “Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.”
Thalia gives her a kiss on the head and turns around, facing the pack of monsters. “Make the most of it, Luke. For me.”
Luke nods, tears streaming down his cheeks as he starts to run. Annabeth blinks. “What’s going on?” she asks, clutching his shoulders. “Luke? Why—where are we going? What about Thalia?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Luke!” she cries, unable to look away from Thalia, alone in the pouring rain at the top of the hill. “Luke, we have to go back! Let me go!” He keeps running, almost to Grover on the other side of the hill.
“Thalia!” Annabeth shrieks. Thalia doesn’t look back at her—she raises her shield, turns her face to the sky. The hairs on Annabeth’s arms stand up. A crackling lances through the air. Thalia yells, crumpling to her knees, and a white-hot bolt of lightning rips from the sky and straight into her. Annabeth screams so loud that she’s sure her throat must be bleeding, fighting against Luke and Grover keeping her on the other side of the hill.
The lightning races from Thalia’s body into each of the monsters, incinerating every last one in seconds and finally returning to Thalia. She can hear the electricity sizzle, harbored in Thalia’s limp body with nowhere to go. A blindingly white light shines from Thalia, throwing the entire scene into sharp relief. Annabeth screws her eyes shut, shaking and sobbing, until a golden glow washes over the hillside. Thalia’s body floats into the air, her shield spinning above her, and rumbling shakes the earth. A sapling erupts from the ground, twisting and shooting into the sky at an insanely accelerated speed, until a full-grown pine tree towers over them.
Thalia’s body twinkles and vanishes, her shield melting into droplets that rain over the tree, coating its leaves in silver. Wind blows through the tree’s branches—Annabeth can smell the acrid scent of the hair dye Luke used to steal for Thalia, taste the cinnamon toast Thalia would cook over their tiny campfires, hear her snickering and snorting laugh echoing in her head. Holding her breath, she imagines that Thalia’s right beside her, crouched down with an arm slung around her shoulders.
The feeling dissipates, swept away with a breeze that brings the first hint of dawn from behind the clouds. Annabeth stares blankly at the tree, her fingers digging into the wet grass. She can vaguely hear Grover and Luke talking, but all she can focus on is the buzzing in her ears, the familiar prickling feeling crawling along her skin. Luke picks her up and starts down the hill, Grover leading the way.
She burrows deeper into Luke’s arms, sobbing quietly, and she curses her mother for that stupid visit so long ago—the words Athena’d said, so certain of herself, and the way that everything she promised came true.
—
Annabeth sits on a bunk bed, swinging her feet. The bed is old and battered, like almost everything in the Hermes cabin. The whole cabin feels abandoned, uncared for, packed full of kids crammed together on the floor and backed into corners. Annabeth’s lucky to have a bed; she thinks Luke had something to do with it, or maybe the centaur, Chiron.
The cabin’s empty, everyone gone to breakfast. Annabeth hasn’t left the cabin since Luke brought her in. She has the highest bunk, right next to the bathroom door so she can keep the light on at night. The other kids probably think she’s crazy; what kind of demigod is afraid of the dark?
It’s not the dark she’s afraid of. Spiders skitter across the cracked floorboards at night, searching for her. They don’t go away in the morning, anymore—they just retreat to the shadows, watching and waiting.
She wasn’t surprised when Chiron told her about her heritage. She’d struggled through as many Greek mythology books as she could after Athena visited her, hunched in her bedroom and rubbing her eyes, hoping that eventually the letters would stop scrambling and swirling around her. She knows Athena’s history, her enemies, her successes and her revenge—but there’s no failures. Athena never fails.
“Hey, Annabeth?” someone says from the door. It’s Grover, carrying a plate. “I brought you some food. You really should eat something.”
Annabeth stares at him.
“Can I sit down?” he asks. She nods, and he tentatively perches next to her. “I know it’s rough right now, with what happened to Thalia and everything new at camp. I just want you to know that Luke and I are always here for you.”
Annabeth’s lower lip trembles. “Why won’t he talk to me, Grover? He hasn’t said a word since we got here.”
Grover sighs. “I really don’t know. He’s going through a lot, too.”
“I just want it to all be back to normal,” Annabeth whispers. “No more spiders, and Thalia alive, and Luke here.”
Grover gives her a slightly awkward but gentle side-hug. “I’m sure he’ll be back soon. I could talk to the Hephaestus cabin and see if they have ideas about the spiders?”
“Thanks, Grover,” Annabeth sniffles.
“Any time.” He smiles. “Why don’t you take your food to the pavilion? Chiron said you could sit with him, if you wanted to.”
Annabeth follows him out of the cabin. The other campers whisper when she walks in the dining pavilion, but she tries to keep her head high as she walks down the aisle, carrying her plate to the brazier like Grover told her to.
Just as she reaches the brazier, a high, clear ringing sound echoes through the pavilion. Everyone around her is quiet, eyes trained above her head. She looks up to see an owl symbol floating above her, shining silver in the dusk glow. Chiron stands from the head table and kneels. “Hail, Annabeth Chase, daughter of Athena.”
The owl shines brighter, transforming into a scroll that floats down into Annabeth’s hands. She opens it, reads it. “Um, I’ll—I’ll be back,” she mumbles, running out of the pavilion and into the night.
—
Athena is waiting for her on the hill, silhouetted by the rising moon. Her figure is miniscule in comparison to Thalia’s tree.
“Annabeth,” she greets, inclining her head.
“Mother.”
Athena surveys the valley. “I am glad that you are here. Chiron’s training will serve you well.”
“Thalia is dead,” Annabeth blurts out.
“Yes, I am aware. Unfortunate.”
“Why didn’t you help her?” Annabeth asks. “If you’re all as powerful as Chiron says, why didn’t any of the gods save her?”
“I warned you of what would happen, Annabeth,” her mother says, her eyes dark. “You knew the consequences of your actions.”
“You could have saved her!” Annabeth yells.
“She was a distraction, nothing more,” her mother bites out. “Family, friendship, love—all of these are temporary, unnecessary. Wisdom relies only on itself. Why would I save her?”
“Because I loved her!” Annabeth’s vision blurs with rage; she launches herself at Athena. She stabs out wildly with her knife—she catches Athena by surprise and nicks the tip of her finger with the blade. Annabeth stumbles back, horrified at what she’s done.
Athena lifts her finger to her face, examining the dripping golden ichor. She turns her gaze to Annabeth. “My children must prove themselves worthy, Annabeth. Until you do so, you are no child of mine.”
Annabeth stares at the ichor on the ground long after Athena’s gone. She sits under Thalia’s tree until the sun comes up, listening to the owls hoot in the woods and the breeze rustle the pine branches, and she wishes desperately that she’d never met Thalia.
If she hadn’t, Thalia might’ve still been alive.
—
She never tells anyone what Athena said at Half-Blood Hill. People ask her for weeks after, but Annabeth won’t say. She relives it enough in her dreams—Athena’s burning eyes, Annabeth’s hurt and anger, Athena’s rejection. She works harder than ever, climbing the lava wall until the skin on her hands blisters and peels, studying with Chiron until her vision blurs and floating letters smolder on her eyelids when she tries to sleep.
Annabeth can’t forget. She remembers it all—the scorched thread smoking on her bedroom carpet, Cleo’s happy barking, the first time the spiders came, her father’s mournful stare, Amaya’s regretful eyes. She remembers Luke’s knife lessons, Thalia’s warm jean jacket, Grover’s bleating laugh. She remembers the silver pine leaves, the Celestial bronze knife she still carries with her, the golden ichor drip, drip, dripping on the soil underfoot.
She won’t forget. She can’t let herself forget, because if she does, it’ll all be gone. There’s nothing left of those memories, nothing to remind her of what it’s like to be loved. It’s her fault—Luke couldn’t save Thalia because of her, because she was weak and she couldn’t protect herself or her family. She hasn’t been good enough, and Thalia died as a consequence of her failures. She won’t let it happen again.
Annabeth will prove that she’s good enough.
She’ll make herself worthy of love, or die trying.