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“They’re idiots!”
Annabeth stormed into her tent with Percy close on her heels. She paid no mind to the fearful servants that fled before her. She picked up the near vase and smashed it on the ground.
“Annabeth-”
“Don’t ‘Annabeth’ me!” She rounded on him, finger pointed accusingly in his face. “You know my plan is the best! I’m the best strategist the Greeks have, but they just ignore me! They don’t appreciate me! It’s as if they want to stay besieging Troy for another ten years!”
Annabeth was the greatest daughter of grey-eyed Athena. There was no strategy beyond her grasp and no warrior her equal. The Greeks should have heeded her every command but despite years of stunning victories with her plans, Annabeth’s counsel was regularly ignored. They ignored it at their peril. If the Greeks wanted to prolong this war, that was their choice, but she would have no part of it.
Gentle Percy, his love always faultless and unconditional, took her hand and raised it to his lips. “You’re the best strategist and the best fighter we have, everyone knows that. But you can’t have everything your way. Hubris is the death of the best of us.”
She pulled away. “You’re saying I’m too arrogant?”
“I’m saying you need to trust that other people know what they’re doing too.” Percy stepped forward and wrapped her in his arms.
It was impossible to maintain her anger when he did that. Annabeth rested her head against his chest, feeling the gentle thrum of his heartbeat. His uncanny ability to calm her was all that kept her sane.
“It’s just so frustrating.” Weariness slipped into her voice. She would never dare show a hint of weakness with anyone but him “I’m not going to follow that other stupid plan when it’s not going to work.”
Percy pulled back. There was a softness in his sea-green eyes that threatened to melt away her anger. “Wise Girl, you know they’re already committed to the attack. They’re gearing up as we speak.”
“Then they’ll fight without me.”
“But they need you out there! The Greeks need to see you, and the Trojans need to fear you.”
Annabeth pulled away again and paced across the tent. “Apparently they don’t need me! Let the Greeks throw themselves at the Trojans for another day! When they don’t get anywhere, they’ll come crawling back looking for a plan that actually works.”
Percy heaved a heavy sigh. It was the sort of sigh that showed he knew she was too stubborn to budge and fighting her would be pointless. “Alright,” but he said it as if he’s going to follow it up with one of his stupid ideas, “I’m going to fight anyway.”
It felt a little bit like a betrayal. Annabeth and Percy did everything together. They woke up together, ate together, made love together. They rarely stepped on a battlefield without each other. She’d assumed that Percy would sit it out with her. That was how things were supposed to be.
Yet Annabeth saw resolve in him. Annabeth might have been known for her pride and her stubbornness, but Percy could be every bit as fierce when he wanted to be. His free-spiritedness, his thirst for glory, his undying loyalty to his friends - they compelled him to fight even though he shared her reservations. Who was she to deny him that choice?
“Okay. Fight with them,” she conceded. “But I’m still not going. The Greeks will have to deal without the morale boost.”
“Are you really going to let the Trojans step on the battlefield without having to fear you?”
There was a vile thrill in those words, as if from vicious Ares himself. After ten years, after watching so many friends fall at the hands of the Trojans, she was glad they feared her. They knew that crossing her path in the field meant death.
Still, she would not be tempted.
“You’ll be there, so they’ll have plenty to fear. I’m sure Jason and Frank will be right beside you. The three of you are a match for almost their entire army.”
Percy serviced her with his smuggest smirk. “Almost?”
“Almost,” she repeated. Percy was good. Great. Amazing . But the Trojans had heroes of their own. Not that Annabeth didn’t think Percy could equal them, but she wasn’t going to tempt fate.
Percy frowned in a boyish way unbecoming of the seasoned warrior he was. It was his stupid idea face again. Annabeth knew it well.
“What are you thinking?”
Percy looked over at the stand holding Annabeth’s crested helm, gleaming chestplate, and bronze-tipped spear. “Give me your armour.”
She frowned. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” Percy walked over to the armour with a grin that oozed confidence. “Let me fight in your armour. We’ll get the psychological benefits of everyone seeing you on the field without you needing to do a thing. It’s a win-win.”
Annabeth folded her arms, somewhat amused by his plan. “You think you’re so much my equal that no one will notice the difference?”
“Our last sparring session says yes,” Percy replied with a smirk.
“Alright,” she went over and kissed his cheek. “Go on. Fight for me.”
Percy held her there and placed a lingering kiss on her lips. “I’d fight for you until my last breath, you know that.”
For ten years Annabeth and Percy had fought the Trojans. Every day they’d faced the greatest warriors the enemy had to offer. Every day vengeful gods tried and failed to strike them down. Every day, they came home to each other. Today would be no different.
Annabeth dressed him herself. Her fingers brushed every well-worn muscle of her peerless hero. She tied the straps around his arms and smiled at the kisses he planted on her hair when she was in reach. Then she raised her great crested helm and placed it on his brow. There was no finer warrior in her eyes. Annabeth’s heart swelled with love for her Percy and she swore that no god, not even furious Ares nor far-shooting Apollo, could touch him.
Annabeth stared into his sea-green eyes before pouring all her passion into one final kiss.
Percy marched off to war with the bronzed-armoured Greeks, leaving Annabeth to the turmoil of her thoughts. She cursed all of the other Greeks that, though her friends, refused to heed her wisdom, and forced her to sit out or else wound her pride.
Hours rolled on. The distant screams of dying men carried to her tent and she wondered how many of the Trojans had been laid low by Percy’s spear. Her anger cooled when she imagined him returning that evening, soaked in sweat and blood, full of stories of his valiant fighting and with the assurance that, of course, they should have just listened to her plan instead.
It was close to sunset and Annabeth was pouring over another map of Troy when she felt a presence beside her.
“Daughter.”
Annabeth turned and saw Pallas Athena with her spear in hand and gleaming aegis at her side. She appeared unannounced as always. Annabeth was used to it now, but her mother’s grey eyes were filled with an unspoken emotion that sent a spike of fear even into Annabeth’s fearless soul.
“Mother! What’s wrong?”
“Please know, my child, that I did all I could, but the threads of Fate are set. Even I cannot turn aside their will.”
At that moment, Annabeth’s world crumbled.
Some souls were bound across time and place, entwined with a connection that mere laws or reality could not dictate. Annabeth and Percy shared one such bond. They knew instinctively when the other was in pain or fear or swept up in joy. They could say without words what poets could not communicate with a thousand lines. They were one life in two bodies. One soul in two hearts.
In that moment, she felt that connection shatter. A single savage strike as if the cruel Fates had cut their threads with a knife. She did not need to see it to know it had happened.
Percy was gone.
Annabeth collapsed on the floor of her tent. Athena disappeared as her daughter choked out a bitter, wretched sob. It took moments for the shock to pass and for Annabeth to leap up, tears spilling from her eyes as she ran for the battlefield. She seized a spear from a rack but refused to slow her swift-footed run to the field outside the city.
Annabeth drew closer to the battlefield. Trojans and Greeks were locked in bitter combat in the shadow of Troy’s great walls. Despite knowing it was futile, her eyes searched for the crest of her helmet on his head amidst the chaos. She dreamed of seeing him, spear gleaming in the sunlight as he cut down the enemy by the dozens, praying that the guttural emptiness in her soul was the trick of some meddling god. Praying, but not believing.
His chariot lay broken in the middle of the fighting. It was easy to spot spear-famed Jason and mighty Frank, Percy’s earnest friends, mounting a ferocious defence as hordes of Trojans pushed towards something on the field. Someone.
There she saw him. Lying in the dust, the armour already stripped from his body, and his blood seeping out into the ground from the deep wound in his stomach.
The cry that ripped from her silenced the field. The Greeks that hadn’t already known of Percy’s fate learned it then. The Trojans stayed their attack, fearing Annabeth’s wrath if, in her grief, she went for vengeance.
She fell to her knees in the pool of his blood and sobbed into his lifeless body. They didn’t even get to say goodbye. The warmth was leaving him already. The lips that had whispered his affections and captured her heart were cold and paling. His black hair clung to his forehead in a mop of sweat, dust, and blood, its lustre gone. The only mercy was his closed eyes. If she’d been forced to endure the sight of his sea-green eyes, all life and light gone out of them, then she would have fallen on her own sword there next to him.
Annabeth cried. She cried as the Greeks surrounded her in a defensive formation. She cried as her friends and allies broke into their own tears. She cried when the Greeks came to lift Percy’s body onto a bier. She cried when her friends had to pry her arms off him so they could take him away.
With Percy’s blood still staining her skin and her own tears choking her vision, she searched for the one responsible. She did not need to ask, did not need Jason and Frank to tell her. She knew who it was. The Trojans had only one man, one beast, that could have bested him.
She saw him there, among the ranks of the Trojans. Percy’s blood still dripped from his spear.
Luke Castellan.
All her righteous fury must have shown through across that battlefield, because the moment Annabeth spotted him, Luke had his men sound the retreat. The thundering trumpets sent the Trojans scurrying back into their city.
Only her love restrained her then. She would have cut them down as they ran. She would have clambered over the fleeing corpses to reach Luke and tear him apart. The only reason she didn’t was because Percy mattered more. She needed to attend to him before anything else.
With keen eyes she watched Luke as the last of the enemy withdrew inside Troy’s great gates. Before he disappeared he looked back and, despite the impossible distance, she knew their eyes met. In that moment she whispered a promise, an oath sworn on the River Styx that neither gods nor men would stop her fulfilling:
She was going to kill Luke Castellan. She was going to bury Troy. She was going to extinguish every last soul within its walls. And if the gods got in her way, she was going to cast them down too.
Percy had never cared for vengeance, but what did it matter? He was dead. Percy was dead. Annabeth looked over to his lifeless body already being carried away by his comrades and a fresh cry tore from her throat.
The strong-greaved Greeks took their greatest hero back to camp in a mournful silence. None dared approach her or question her. Annabeth spoke only three times. First, to order Percy’s body to be taken to her tent, second, to order water and oils to be brought, and third, for everyone to leave her.
Silently, alone, she tended to him. Annabeth washed the dust and blood from his beautiful face. She cleaned the fatal wound even though every second she looked at it sent her into soul-tearing sobs. Then she covered his body in fragrant oils and dressed him in the simple tunic that, hours before, he’d worn as he held her in his arms and cautioned her for her hubris.
When she had done all she could for his body, Annabeth sat beside him and took his hand. The cold was the worst part. How many times had she threaded their fingers together to feel the warmth and life in him? How often had she felt his heart beating so powerfully as they ran or fought or loved? It couldn’t be real. Percy without life wasn’t real. Life without Percy wasn’t real.
There was nothing for her without him. Vengeance came first, for his sake, but then? Annabeth could imagine no greater torture than the future that came after. A future without him. She prayed, then, that she would not have to suffer it.
Annabeth did not need to plan anything. She knew exactly what was to be done. In the early hours of the morning, the other Greek leaders came to her tent with news that, indeed, they would be following her original plan tomorrow. Jason and Frank tried to tell them of Percy’s valour, as if she had any doubt that he’d died in glory. They offered their condolences, their sympathies, their anger, their aid, but she ignored them. There was nothing they or anyone could do for her now, except get out of her way.
Another person might have been angry at them. Perhaps she did blame them, at least a bit. But she could not spare them any anger. All her rage and all her passion rested on the head of the man that killed him.
Before dawn, a final visitor came. Lord Hephaestus was a pleasantly simple god. He asked no questions and had no expectations. When he arrived, he came with a gleaming set of armour to replace the one pillaged from Percy on the battlefield. A spear, a breastplate, and helmet, their intricate designs would have captured an audience as a poet described every finite detail, but Annabeth did not care. She was going to use them to kill Luke Castellan. That was all that mattered.
The next day, rosy-fingered dawn mounted her golden throne as Annabeth lay a final kiss on Percy’s forehead and marched off to war.
“Lord Zeus has released us from our restraints.” Grey-eyed Athena appeared beside her. “I am with you, child, but beware the other gods will not sit idle. Far-shooting Apollo favours Luke and will not let him fall before his appointed hour.”
Annabeth grimaced. She’d kill Apollo too, if it came to it.
With a vengeful cry for Percy, the Greeks charged the Trojan line. Annabeth was in the thick of the fighting, but it was little more than a prelude for her. She cut down great men and women. Warriors whose deaths would break the hearts of gods and nations fell at her feet, irrelevant to her. Her spear drank the blood of a thousand men until the fields of Troy were crimson from horizon to horizon.
It was not enough. It would never be enough.
At last, she spotted him. Luke Castellan rode out through the gate of his city and Annabeth charged for him. The few Trojans that dared interrupt her advance were sent swiftly to Hades.
Luke spotted her thundering down upon him. He raised his spear and cast it across the sky, but she felt the hidden touch of her mother send it harmlessly to the earth. Annabeth cast the spear back, only for ever-young Apollo to shield him in turn. Perhaps Greece needed a new sun god after all.
“Luke Castellan!” Annabeth’s scream sent the battlefield into silence.
“Annabeth Chase, greatest of the Greeks.” Luke’s fear disappeared, hidden but surely not gone, and he took up a wry smile. “Imagine my surprise when I saw you take the field when our spies had insisted you refused to fight. I should have suspected it wasn’t you. You’re far too proud.”
Annabeth snarled. “I’m not going to waste words with you. Even if I could kill you a hundred times over, it wouldn’t begin to compensate for what you did.”
Luke shrugged with such infuriating nonchalance that Annabeth could feel nothing but the bloodlust taking over her. “Percy started a fight, I finished it. A shame he wasn’t as good a fighter as you.”
Annabeth would have killed him then, had she not heard her mother’s calming voice. “Tomorrow, my child. Call him to face you tomorrow, to settle the affairs of the Greeks and the Trojans once and for all. Then even Phoebus Apollo will not be able to turn your spear aside.”
It felt like a crime. Every breath Luke took was an insult to Percy. She thought of him lying in his tent, his chest still, his limbs heavy, the rot soon to come for his perfect face.
“Tomorrow,” she said lowly, grimly. “In the eyes of both armies, we will meet here. And no god will save you from me.”
The promise had all the effect she needed. Luke paled and he knew the coming night would be his last.
Both armies retired. Annabeth could not bear to return to her tent. She could not face Percy knowing she had stood within metres of the man that killed him and let him go. She did not sleep or eat or drink. She merely waited, wishing Nyx would hasten away and usher in the day where she tore the life from Luke Castellan.
At the appointed time, the Greeks assembled outside the walls of Troy. The Trojans stayed secured in the city, opening the gates for one lone soldier to march to his death.
Luke was every image of a warrior. His bronze spear was fastened with gold and his polished shield glistened in the sun. He walked out with his helmet slung under his arm. She imagined his family were on the walls. His father, his mother, his wife, his daughter.
They were going to watch him die. She was going to make sure of that.
With cold certainty, Annabeth stepped forth and removed her helmet for one final conversation. She levelled her spear at Luke, marking him out and praying her mother would lend her strength.
Luke’s arrogance had faded in the night. He was more sombre now as the hour of his death arrived.
“Annabeth, we can end this honourably. We can-”
“You dare!” Annabeth’s scream echoed against the city and the sound alone might have torn its walls down. “You stand there, after what you did to him, and speak of honour? You took him from me,” the words limped out of her and brought tears with them, “you murdered him. You didn’t even leave him his armour.”
“I only-”
“You only, what, killed the man I loved? Left him naked and dead on the field as your army scrambled over his body like dogs?” Hot angry tears ran down her cheeks. “You don’t deserve honour! You don’t deserve anything but my spear through your heart!” She thought of Percy again and another sob slipped out. “Nothing is ever going to make up for what you took from me, but I will avenge him.” She looked to the sky and muttered one last breathless prayer to Olympus. “You’ve taken the only one I loved. At least let me avenge him. Please give me that.”
Annabeth swore she felt the earth rumble far away just as a cloud drifted in front of the sun. She supposed she’d find out what that meant soon enough.
They needed no more words. Luke, accepting his fate, charged.
Luke was an excellent fighter. There was no shame in anyone falling to him. It was a small consolation.
They danced in metal and fury. Luke’s spear broke and he switched to his sword, ducking and weaving as Annabeth’s weapon desperately sought its opening. The weapons and armour of Hephaestus warded off every strike but even without them her rage would have sustained her through any pain.
At last she found it. A gap near his neck. Luke lunged, overcommitted. Annabeth struck. Her spear found his neck and drove through, severing flesh and muscle and bone and sending a cascade of blood down his breast. A thousand wailing cries rose from the walls of Troy as their treasured son fell, but they were drowned out by triumphant cheers from the Greeks.
There was no relief for Annabeth. No pleasure. Luke died like any other man.
She pulled her spear out and stabbed him again, as if the relief she craved was still stitched up inside Luke’s body and only had to be drawn out.
“It’s not enough!” she cried.
She struck at the body again and again. The Greeks stood by in silent fear when she summoned her chariot and the ropes to tie Luke's body to it. There was silence, save for the wretched sobs of the Trojans, when she dragged Luke’s battered corpse around the walls of his city in a savage display that defied all laws of decency and honour. After the armies retired, she had Luke’s body cast to the dogs, an insult so grave that the Trojans were sure to keep fighting to avenge it until they had no more men to spare or until the Greeks offered peace. Not one Greek was brave enough to say a word against her.
That night, they gathered for Percy’s funeral. Annabeth stacked the pyre herself and bore his precious body to it. Amidst the solemn onlookers, she cast the torch into the wood and watched the flames slowly consume him. Her love, her sole purpose in life, her only home.
No vengeance would be enough. No amount of blood could balance a drop of Percy’s love. There would be no relief except with him. Hades alone had the key to Annabeth’s salvation.
Ever-cunning Leo concocted a plan to enter the city. The children of Hephaestus raised a great wooden horse so that the horse-taming Trojans might accept it as a gift. Inside, Annabeth and the best of the Greeks concealed themselves. Amidst the celebrations from the false peace offering, the Greeks sprang forth, threw open the gates, and condemned Troy to the ashes of history.
But Annabeth knew no victory would ease her pain. Only death might free her now.
So, when the Greeks fell upon their unwary enemy, Annabeth sought out the thickest of the fighting against the last of Troy’s desperate defenders. With every fight she was reckless and bold, praying that by some miracle one of the Trojans might strike her down and send her to Percy.
At last, her wish was granted. An archer loosed, vengeful Apollo whispered, and a swift-flying arrow carried her home to him.