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They’d lost the trail again, but Thalia split from her smaller group, the group she’d taken from the hunt to find and destroy this nest of monsters, to see if she could find it on her own.
San Francisco was wet and a little miserable but she stalked round back streets and alleyways, keeping an eye out both for the monsters, and for any girls she could recruit, of the right age and disposition.
Lady Artemis had been nervous when they’d crossed the border from Nevada, but she’d put it down to being so close either to the Underworld, or to where she’d been held prisoner so recently. It was unusual for gods to be held prisoner, and Thalia only knew of a few examples, though there must be more that she simply didn’t know of, all things being considered. Gods didn’t especially like expressing their own weaknesses, or at least every single god she had ever met didn’t like it.
Thalia didn’t have any good memories associated with California either. Before Zoe, Percy, and Mount Tam, she’d been there, in that park, with her mother, and with- She’d been there with her mother. And she’d gone back to the car. And nothing in her life had ever been right again.
There was Before, when she hadn’t necessarily been happy , but things had been good. Mostly. And there was After. With Luke, and later: Annabeth. On the road, fighting monsters. Trying to survive.
It was still a kind of Before, though. A Before Before, and Before After. She’d had other Afters. After being a tree and trying to cope that this was her life now, that she still had to make it to sixteen, and everything was too bright and too loud all the time, and she couldn’t feel like she had before, like something human about her had been lost in those years of sap and bark. And now, her immortal life with Artemis and the Hunters, the closest to calm she had felt since she’d been a tree, the closest to happiness she’d been before that picnic.
It started raining again and she zipped up her jacket so it was covering her mouth, keeping her hood over her head. These monsters were attracted by shiny things, but apparently a completely silver jacket wasn’t good enough for them.
She’d been walking for close to an hour, passing the same streets, and shops, and wondering if she could justify getting a coffee before the cafés closed soon, when she heard a yell - which sounded a little like Latin - and the clatter of metal on brick. Like a weapon on a brick wall.
She was running, bow in hand, arrow already notched, her shoulder dropped, and arm already drawing back the string by the time she hit the alley. Only to see a blond boy in armour, and the very monster she’d been hunting, right before it disappeared into dust.
“Who are you?” She didn’t drop the bow. This could be one of Kronos’ operatives, a member of his demigod army on a solo mission. She didn’t recognise this boy from camp, but she hadn’t been there very long, and she hadn’t gotten a proper look at him yet anyway.
He turned around, his grip fixed on his spear. “You first.” His throat bobbed a little. He couldn’t be older than fourteen, and he spoke very deliberately, like he didn’t want to squeak when he spoke. Luke had been like that for a couple of months until his voice had stopped doing that, but it had been pretty funny.
He looked familiar though. Not in a way she really wanted to address though. It was cruel of the Fates to make her meet a boy like this, like what her brother would have looked like if Hera hadn’t taken him, hadn’t demanded his life in return for her own husband’s infidelity. He even had- was that the same scar on his lip?
Odysseus’ nursemaid Eurycleia had only recognised him when she’d bathed him, and seen the scar from a boar tusk on his leg. A stapler was hardly the same thing, but it was all she had. They didn’t have the same hair, or shoe size, or whatever Ancient Greeks used to say siblings were related to each other, but she knew her brother all the same. “Jason?”
“How do you know my name?” He tilted his head upwards.
“You wouldn’t remember me,” she breathed in and out sharply, and unnotched the arrow. It wasn’t great for the bow, but it was better than shooting her brother. “I’m Thalia. Your sister.” She laid down her bow, and then took out each and every knife on her person, the hunting knives strapped to her thighs, the ones in her boots, even the little one she had for cutting twine, all laid in a pile in front of him. “Can we talk?”
“My Lady,” Thalia bowed as she entered the tent. “The nest is destroyed.”
“Very good, Thalia. Come sit, tell me all.” Artemis patted the deer skin mat beside her. She looked at her, and even though she looked twelve, there was no hiding her age in those silver eyes. “You seemed troubled.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that there were Roman demigods?” She asked softly. She wanted to be angry, she was furious, but she wasn’t sure at whom right now. With Beryl? All the time. With Hera? Also all the time. Zeus? Depended on the day. With whomever had kept this from her? Absolutely.
Artemis flickered, her skin becoming less freckled, her hair darkening to black. And then she was back, looking exactly how she had before. “I will tell you, Thalia, daughter of Zeus, sister of mine.” Her voice was soft, like the fletching of an arrow right before it helped bury the point into an animal’s flank. “But I will need an oath. On the River Styx, that you will never tell anyone of this, unless they know of it already.”
Thalia was well aware of the risks of swearing on the Styx, and then breaking that oath. She’d lived with the consequences of it over her entire life. It was a no brainer, “I swear it on the River Styx.”