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Hera had a problem.

Picking up the boy had been easy – step into his cabin, snap her fingers while he wasn’t looking, and boom. One unconscious demigod-slash-weapon ready to be kept and stored for four months until he was needed.

She just hadn’t accounted for one thing, and it was what the fuck she was supposed to do with him now.

Hera was seriously considering sticking Percy Jackson in a closet until April.

It wouldn’t be much of a problem, right? She didn’t know a whole lot about human health, but she was pretty confident that they were strong enough to last four months without food or water. Most creatures could do that, she was pretty sure. Surely he’d be fine if she just… like, left him there. Hopefully.

She sighed and rubbed her face.

Kidnapping Jason had been a lot easier than this. For one thing, he was her champion, so he was a lot more submissive. He’d fallen asleep in a snap. For another thing, he only had to be hidden for two months.

But April? April?

How the fuck was she supposed to keep such a nuisance hidden until April?

Jackson was a lot more annoying, disrespectful, and impertinent compared to his Roman counterpart. Hera had quite a bit of trouble shutting him up and putting him to sleep. He kept drifting back awake for over an hour until she was finally able to make him sleep permanently, after much struggling, shouting, and cursing. And once he was comatose, Hera still couldn’t figure out where to put him. After several minutes of internal debate, she was still in Cabin Three, which made her feel odd, since it was technically the territory of her stupid brother.

Hmm. For Jason, she’d simply kept him in a pocket dimension, where he would still be hovering right about now. He was perfectly fine – but that was potentially because two months wasn’t that long of a time. Four months? Until April, which would give Percy enough time to train with Lupa’s pack until the Feast of Fortuna? It would be much more difficult to sustain a demigod’s health for so long.

Yeah, she couldn’t do it. If Percy died before the Prophecy of Seven ever took place because of bad handling, then all her plans would be ruined. It would be a horribly big mess, and Zeus would undoubtedly blame her for it.

Well… Hera turned and studied the boy’s limp form in bed. All she needed to do was get him out of his room tonight, she supposed. Just somewhere where the other campers couldn’t find him, no matter how hard they looked. Her magic had already shut down the empathy link between Jackson and his friend the satyr Grover Underwood – the empathy link being a magical connection that let them sense each other’s presence and emotions. Hopefully without it, the campers wouldn’t track him down for the next couple of days, at least until Hera could find him a better hiding place.

A better hiding place. Assuming she could find one in the first place, of course. A pocket dimension wouldn’t work like it had with Jason – Percy’s body would deteriorate after more than two months, and if Hera happened to be sidelined by Gaea or the giant’s efforts before she could remove him by that time… well, she couldn’t risk him crumbling to dust before the Feast of Fortuna. She had to pull this off right.

She did, indeed, end up using a closet.

Hera didn’t mean to. But it was convenient. The closet was big enough, clean enough, and most importantly, it was right there.

She did a mental Google search, using her enormous library of immortal memories: How long can a human survive without air?

Several hours was the answer. But that was for humans, and Percy was a half-blood. So surely he’d be fine for a few days, right? Plus, the closet was big. There had to be enough air in the closed space to last him a while. It was a small storage room, fifty paces square, in a car manufacturing plant down in Detroit. Monocle Motors, the plant was called. It seemed fishy to Hera – undoubtedly, Cyclopes were in the area, if the singular eye logo printed on the walls was any clue – but she didn’t have a whole lot of time, and it seemed safe enough. 

She put Percy behind a pile of car parts, which would hopefully keep him sheltered. Since he’d been awake when she popped into his cabin and put him to sleep, he was still wearing his Camp Half-Blood clothes – a bright orange T-shirt and shorts – which seemed like a frostbite risk to her considering they were in the middle of December, so as an extra precaution, she grabbed a large piece of blue tarp that was hanging off a shelf nearby and put it over him.

It covered his face. Hopefully he wouldn’t suffocate.

Great. We’re done here.

Hera stood back and surveyed the surroundings. They looked safe enough, but were they? She knew Cyclopes were in the area, but maybe they would leave Jackson alone, considering his parentage. Cyclopes tended to be kinder towards the children of the sea god – though not always. There was always the inside chance that they would devour him at first sight.

I’ve just got to hope that they won’t find him, then. Hera knew it was futile, even as the thought passed through her head. Percy was powerful enough that his scent was probably already attracting every monster in a ten mile radius, and since Detroit wasn’t a very demigod-heavy area, the monsters here would already be desperate for any taste of godly blood. And he was defenseless – the coma she’d put him in would keep him asleep through a nine-magnitude earthquake. What if Gaea managed to trap Hera? The thought made her feel sick. If she was sidelined and unable to return to this hiding spot, the boy would die. Hera might not have known much about human health, but she knew that.

Doubts started to gnaw at her. Maybe this wasn’t safe enough. Maybe this would fail. Maybe Gaea was destined to destroy them, after all. Maybe – 

She shut off her train of thought. Sometimes, being an immortal with an infinite brainspace wasn’t a good thing.

I’ll go back to Olympus, Hera reassured herself glumly. There, she’d be able to think clearly, without all the emotions that came from being near mortals influencing her. Plus, I’ll be able to seek help from Hecate, the only other goddess who knows my plan. Together they could puzzle things out. 

Hera turned, ready to teleport back to Olympus. Then some twinge of instinct made her glance back to the half-blood’s form under the tarp.

“What a bother you are to manage,” she muttered under her breath, bitter and unable to resist.

Then she turned her head back, focused, and disappeared in a flash of golden light.

Focus. Focus. Focus. 

“So Levesque will need my training,” Hecate was saying. “I suppose that I should anchor my Greek form in advance, in case of a conflict?”

Hera could barely hear her, but she nodded.

In her head, she was in New York, standing at Jason’s side. A cold voice slunk through her head, as soft and poetic as the winter wind.

Why are you focusing? it asked. There is so much more you could spend your time on. Think about something else...

Hera was in Sonoma.

She didn’t know what had brought her here, but she had figured that she might as well use her time wisely, so she was talking to Lupa.

“Just accept him,” she said gruffly. “I know it is against the old ways, but it is what we need to defeat Gaea. It is what we need if we want to – ”

What do you need? the voice whispered. A shiver went up her spine. Perhaps you need to stay. Perhaps this place is a turning point, perhaps…

Juno? Questioned Lupa, ears twitching.

“ – succeed,” finished Hera – Juno –  with a sharper edge to her voice than she’d intended. Like a cube of ice had been placed under her tongue, or a flurry of snow.

Khione.

Fuck her.

Hera couldn’t believe that she’d been tricked by such a B-list goddess. Khione was so low-tier, Hera had honestly forgotten that she’d existed. And yet, she’d let herself be beguiled by that stupid soft, fluttery, snowy voice in her head, and now she was stuck in a dark twisted cage of earthen tendrils in the Wolf House. And Lupa wasn’t even here to help her, because Porphyrion’s presence was keeping her and her pack away.

Which made Hera dependent… dependent on Jason Grace, Leo Valdez, and Piper McLean.

Oh, they had better come and save her.

Jason, Hera knew she could rely on. The boy had been on several quests in her name and succeeded on all of them. He was a fine-tuned weapon of the Romans. Valdez… Hera had watched over him when he was a child, and he had an equally bright future, if their short experiences together were any sign.

Aphrodite’s girl? Hera had no idea, but at least her charmspeak seemed potent.

She sighed and started pacing the cage for what felt like the millionth time. The muddy earth dragged her down with each step, but every time she managed to lift her feet out of Gaea’s sucking grasp, she felt a dart of satisfaction. As if she was saying out loud to the Earth Mother: You can’t have me yet. She even jumped a few times, just to prove it.

On the fourth jump –  gods, she was glad that nobody was watching her – a thought hit her and she almost fell over.

Dammit. She’d forgotten the other kid.

Percy almost woke up.

He could feel it. He was so close to opening his eyes. He didn’t know why they had been closed in the first place, but there was a heavy spell on him – something firm and soft and warm, like a weighted blanket – that made him want to keep sleeping, and he could tell that he wasn’t supposed to be asleep.

(Right?)

He just… he had to wake up. It was important, though he couldn’t remember why.

Percy started to pull himself out of slumber. There were distinct flashes of color before his eyes; something bright blue, gray, red. Pillars of fire and the loud clank of machinery. Shouts of names he didn’t recognize. 

Where was he?

No, no, no, no, no.

Hera was struggling. Her breath came short and paced. Her throat was on fire from exertion. Her finger tips were alight with gold, with power.

Go back to sleep, she thought angrily. There was no way the boy had managed to wake up so quickly, and yet… she could definitely sense his conscious at the edge of waking. She could feel her sleeping spell slipping off of him, like it was being physically pried away with cold, earthen fingers…

Gaea. Of course. The Earth Mother had kept Hera trapped here, and so now Hera’s magic was fading, letting Percy wake up. Which was a Problem. A very big Problem.

“You – infernal –  mite, ” she muttered under her breath. She could have been talking about the demigod, or maybe about Gaea. It really didn’t matter, at this point.

A piece of metal rustled in the corner, catching Leo’s attention.

Him and Piper had been helping Jason, who had been knocked out by Cyclopes, back to awareness, but something about his instincts was burning. Telling him that Jason could wait. What’s in that corner?

They were in a random car factory in Detroit, where all sorts of weird stuff – including Cyclopes, apparently – could pop out of anywhere, but maybe…

He told Piper that he was going to check something and backed away while she handled an unconscious Jason. His feet took him to the end of the room – a large storage area where the Cyclopes had brought them to be killed and eaten. He’d had to pull some serious fire magic to get them out of trouble, and they’d only escaped by sheer luck. Leo sure hoped that his curiosity wasn’t going to get them in another fix now. He would hate to have killed the Cyclopes only to accidentally wake up another monster.

He peered around the corner.

Nothing. Just a big piece of blue tarp, and some metal parts. Must have just been gravity, or a trick on his ears.

He turned back. Piper shot him a questioning look from across the room, and he shook his head. “It was nothing,” he called to her. “Probably just my nerves.”

Yes. Hera relaxed. It was like a heavy weight had been taken off of her shoulders.

The boy had gone back to sleep, which had taken quite a bit of effort, but at least she’d pulled it off. 

Three days.

The boy had been left unsupervised for three days.

Hera frowned down at him. He was still under the blue tarp, but a few pieces of metal had been displaced. Presumably because he’d moved around while trying to wake up. Jason, Piper, and Leo had freed her in time to keep him from dying from thirst… but it had taken effort, for goodness’ sake. Hera had gotten to him in the nick of time.

So, clearly, the Cyclopes-infested car plant was a bad hiding place.

Where else could she keep him?

It was New Year’s Day. Hera had picked a rather funny place for Percy, if she thought so herself.

They were in Canada. Vancouver, to be exact. Frank Zhang lived across the street. The location itself was an abandoned house; it was populated with mice and spiders, but at least there were no Cyclopes. And if something went wrong, then at least she could take on her Roman form of Juno and check up on Zhang at the same time.

She put Percy in the corner of a shabby bedroom. For a moment, she considered putting him on the crumbling bed in the corner, but it looked like it was about to fall over, so she eventually decided against it. She just dropped him on the floorboards, sending up a cloud of dust.

Suddenly feeling antsy, Hera – wait, she was Juno now – glanced out the window. Across the street was the Zhang family home. Mai Zhang, Frank’s grandmother, was watering plants in the front yard. A shadow moved in the window of one of the bedrooms, presumably Frank, who was home for winter break. Emily Zhang, Frank’s mother, wasn’t home at all. She was off in Afghanistan, fighting for the Canadian forces.

Idly, Juno wondered if Mars planned to visit Frank today. It was the New Year, after all.

Probably not. The pointed thought prodded at her mind. Mars would stay as far away from the Zhang family as he could, for now, and Juno knew exactly why. Don’t want to attract monsters. The beasts of Tartarus would find Frank easier if he knew who he was, and his father’s appearance would definitely raise questions about his own identity, even if Mars didn’t tell him outright about his godly blood. 

Neptune would, though.

The thought made Juno purse her lips.

 Neptune didn’t have many Roman children, and so he visited what few descendants he did have – which, at the moment, was just the Zhang line. Unless Percy counts now, Juno thought bitterly, since he’ll be at Camp Jupiter in a few months. She knew that Neptune wouldn’t be obvious about his visit – he’d probably turn up as a delivery man, or something equally subtle. But at least he would be there.

Juno’s heart clenched. She’d always been… quietly jealous about the fact that other gods could have children. Juno wasn’t a maiden goddess, but she was the goddess of marriage, and so she wasn’t allowed to cheat on Jupiter – not if she wanted to make a good example of a happy marriage. And sometimes it was lonely. Unbearably lonely. Juno would see Ceres giving gifts to her children, or Apollo showering love on his, or even Vulcan watching his own through a video screen, and think: Why can’t I have that? 

She would, daresay, do a better job as a parent than her husband. She wouldn’t leave her children to die as if they were toys to be thrown away. She wouldn’t ignore her kids and only visit them twice in their entire lives. She… she would be a mother.

Perhaps that was why she’d taken Jason as her champion. She’d seen the mess of his mother, Beryl Grace, and thought… Why can’t I fix that part of his life? Thalia, she’d refused the same kindness – the girl resembled her father too much for Juno to look at her without wrinkling her nose. But Jason… Jason was the closest she’d ever come to having child.

(Which Jason? asked a curious voice in her mind. It didn’t sound like Khione. Juno shoved it away.)

Anyways… she sighed and looked down and Percy. A part of her worried that Neptune would sense his son’s presence across the street, when he inevitably came to visit. She’d have to double her concealing magic.

Juno unfolded her hands, which had been clasped across her stomach. Gold power sparked around them, and she set to work.

“Why did you do this?”

Hera had visited Sally Jackson only once before, back in December, when she’d first kidnapped Percy. She didn’t know why she had; some random mortal mother’s pleas were the least of Hera’s worries, after all. They didn’t matter – not when the fate of the world was at stake. But she had visited, anyways. She had sat invisible in the corner while Sally paced back and forth with a phone in one hand and a drachma for Iris-messaging in the other, asking each and every one of Percy’s friends if they’d seen him or not.

(Nobody had answered Yes, of course. Hera had left when Sally finally put down the phone, looking tired and defeated. Now Hera was suspended invisibly in the corner of Sally’s bedroom, watching her talk to the ceiling. Ten minutes ago, she’d received a call from Goode High School – Percy had been expelled due to an absence of multiple months. The call had ended with We give you our condolences. )

“Why?” Sally continued. “Like… I understand that there’s a war coming. But why couldn’t you tell us? You didn’t have to take him. Or wipe his memories. He would’ve played nice with the Romans, if you’d just asked. But instead of just warning us, you caused this whole mess and – ” She broke off suddenly, wiping at her face.

Hera sighed. “You don’t understand,” she said, answering Sally’s question. “ Percy might have played nice. But the Romans wouldn’t have. Percy needs his memories wiped so that the Romans can see him as truly innocent. They need to see him as helpless , to accept him as a person equal and as human as themselves. They need – ”

“I used to pray to you,” Sally said, unaware of Hera’s monologue, and Hera fell silent.

What?

“I don’t know if you ever heard me,” Sally whispered, and Hera stared at her.

Sally Jackson was a strong woman. Hera hadn’t watched her a whole lot, but she knew that she had to be, to have taken care of a Big Three child for such a long time, without turning abusive or horrible or mean the way Beryl Grace had. Or without dying, like Maria di Angelo or Marie Levesque. There was something about her that was braver, more persistent, more audacious than the average person, or she would have perished before this. Whatever it was, she had obviously passed down something to her obnoxiously alive son, who should have died a long time ago.

But Hera had certainly never heard her prayers.

“I thought… you were the goddess of family. Of mothers ,” Sally went on. “And… I needed help. I didn’t know what to do.” She swallowed. “Poseidon didn’t warn me. Didn’t tell me much. Nothing except that Big Three kids weren’t supposed to exist, and the location of Camp Half-Blood. And I didn’t want to send Percy there, in case Zeus tried to kill him for being his father’s son. So I… prayed. But then – ” Her voice shattered. “Then I got into a marriage, very bad marriage, and I prayed to you so hard that things would change. But nothing got better for a very long time, so I thought… either you weren’t listening, or you didn’t care. ”

Hera was still. Don’t interfere with mortal affairs, Zeus told her, over and over again. And yet she wished she’d known about Sally Jackson’s plight earlier. Because she would have been happy to interfere. Annabeth Chase had once called her cruel, and Percy himself had told her that she had no sympathy, but in her heart she knew that she wouldn’t have stood by. She would have definitely interfered.

“And so I stopped, for a long time. I didn’t think praying was worth it. But now, I think, you just…” Sally’s voice hardened, and Hera instinctively clenched her fists, because Sally had taken on a firm, audacious tone that Hera had heard from her son multiple times before. “You owe me. You owe me for those few bad years. And you owe my son. He won’t tell me much about Kronos, but I can guess enough to know that you owe him some safety. Some peace. So please, please, please, keep him safe.”

Hera watched her unclasp her hands. Watched her get up and leave the room.

The air felt heavy. With the weight of silence. The weight of guilt. The weight of an expectation lost and drowned beneath the sea.

Taking care of Percy was starting to prove… strenuous. 

Hera was hesitant to put him in a pocket dimension. She didn’t want to get sidelined again, the way she had in December, and have him deteriorate – after all, those dimensions were harder on the mortal body than regular ones. Which meant that Percy was being kept alive via nothing but pure magic. Spell upon spell, making sure that he kept breathing, making sure that he didn’t go hungry or thirsty or sick. Hera had no idea if the amount of magic he was under right now would affect him when he woke up. There was the possibility that he would be perfectly fine… or he might crumble to dust instantly after months of being completely dependent on her power.

Hera chewed her lip. She needed to find a place to keep him. She couldn’t keep coming back here, to the abandoned house in Vancouver, every month, or Zeus would get suspicious. She needed to change his location. Put him somewhere safer.

But where was there? What place on earth would take in a half-blood and keep him safe, suspended in time as he was? Unchanging and undying?

Not on the earth, said a voice in Hera’s mind, and she tensed, wondering if it was Khione again. But… no. It just sounded like her own conscience, so she let it in, listening closely. And then the realization hit her, and her and her conscience agreed in tandem:

Under it.

“You’re insane, ” Hades said immediately.

Hera folded her arms. “Am I, though?”

Hades spluttered. “Hera –  think, for once in your eternal life, about what you are saying. ”

“I have,” Hera argued. “And I like it. Come on, brother, why not – ”

“Because it’s crazy! ”

“You left your children in the Lotus Casino for eighty years! This is no more crazy!”

“Take him to the damned Casino, then!” Hades exploded. “I can absolutely not keep him here!”

Hera pouted. Now that she thought about it, keeping Percy in the Lotus Casino wasn’t a terrible idea… but she was afraid that he would lose his memories completely if he stayed in there too long. She planned to take his memories herself, when April finally rolled around, and she couldn’t afford him losing them before that. The Casino – a magical location in Las Vegas, where time didn’t move and residents were free to do whatever they wanted in a lazy bliss that usually removed their memories almost completely – was an unpredicatable place, and if Percy lost his memories in their permanently, Hera didn’t think that even she, an immortal goddess and child of Kronos, could get them back.

(Or, even worse, Percy could escape the Casino’s spell, or one of his friends could find him in there. That would be a catastrophe.)

“No,” she told Hades. “It’s too risky. Hades” – she let her voice shatter deceptively, knowing that he wouldn’t give in without some severe persuasion – ”I helped with your marriage to Persephone, remember? Zeus was all for sending her back to Demeter. And I didn’t rat you out when I realized that you’d hid Nico and Bianca di Angelo in the Casino, back in ‘thirty-seven.”

Hades scowled. But Hera could sense his resolve weakening.

“Come on, brother,” she pressed. “From a brother to a sister, if not a friend to a friend?”

Hades stewed in silence for a few moments. Then he got up from his throne, exhaling heavily.

“You’ve always had a way with words, sister, ” he said tiredly. “Follow me, I suppose. Zeus better not catch you, or it’ll be both of us thrown into Chaos.”

Hera could barely contain her excitement.

She’d pulled it off. She’d really pulled it off.

She’d snuck a living boy into the Fields of Asphodel.

Yes, Hades had taken some convincing, even some emotional blackmail, but in the end he’d agreed . And so now Percy was here. In Asphodel. Looking almost exactly like a shade, thanks to the help of Hecate’s Mist, so that no god would notice him if they happened to inspect the Fields.

Hera felt like squealing like a little girl.

She’d planned in advance for this – Percy would be near-immortal in the Fields, where he couldn’t age or die of hunger and thirst, and so he was perfectly safe, for now. When she retrieved him in April, she’d simply use an aging enchantment on him so that it would be like he’d grown the way he was supposed to. That way, nobody would suspect a thing, and neither she nor Hades would face punishment from Zeus – at least until her plan was well into motion. 

She was so happy, she almost lifted off of her feet in delight.

They were close, now. So close.

Months passed.

Percy was supposed to be somewhere. He knew it. He just didn’t know where exactly, and he knew that he couldn’t get out of this place no matter how much he tried, so he just kept walking. Through the fields. Through the dry, cold grass and the silvery poplar trees and the silence.

Waiting.

Watching.

Mrs. O’Leary whined.

She had shadow-travelled here on pure instinct – a quick visit to the Underworld. She was a hellhound, after all: a creature of Hades’ realm. All she had wanted was some peace and quiet. 

She’d found something else entirely.

(No… some one. )

She nudged Percy’s shoulder, and he didn’t react. Mrs. O’Leary whined a little louder, but he didn’t spare her a single glance.

A growl started to fester in her throat.

Why did he look so dead? 

He smelled alive. But he looked like a shade – gray and colorless and easily forgettable. She could have lost him in a crowd, and that made her growl louder. He was her master. She wasn’t supposed to lose him anywhere. Couldn’t lose him anywhere.

She nudged him so hard, he fell over. She waited for him to glare at her. To laugh. Or scratch her neck and call himself clumsy.

He got back up and turned in the other direction, and Mrs. O’Leary whined again.

It was April. Hera was preparing.

Her heart was going a mile a minute, she could have sworn. If she were mortal, she would have probably had a heart attack a long time ago.

The memory spell would be difficult, but not impossible. She’d done it once before with Jason; she only needed to pull it off once again, and hopefully everything would be fine. Just inside the kid’s brain, and then out as quickly as possible. Grab the memories and go. It was like a robbery, a shoplift, the snap of a photograph.

She had to pull it off right. Just… ever so quickly. A perfect procedure.

“Ready for him, are you?” asked Hades, looking gruff but also mildly amused by her excitement.

“I am,” Hera said, and he closed his eyes.

There was a shimmer. A ripple of the dry Underworld air –

The Mistform of a shade fell away, and then Percy was real, flesh and bone. Mrs. O’Leary leaned forward to catch him as he fell, suddenly unsteady in the middle of the fields – 

He slumped against her, silent, sleeping. She’d been hoping that he would awake after the Mistform fell away, but he was still caught in a long, deep coma.

There was a brilliant flash of light. Two Olympians appeared.

“Begone, stupid dog,” Hades grumbled, waving his hands angrily, and the hellhound dissolved into shadows.

Hera, meanwhile, was already moving towards Percy.

Now, she thought blindly. While he’s still vulnerable. Half-shade and half-alive.

She melted into a golden thread, and then she was in his mind.

Chaos.

This place was worse than Chaos.

Hera whirled through memories. A fire escape. An alleyway. The Empire State Building. A squished cigarette butt. A poker card. The color blue, scribbled on a piece of paper. She stepped through them, into one and out into another, trying to keep her head.

Focus, she told herself. Focus.

The bronze edge of a sword. A curl of blonde hair. A strip of duct tape, securing a jar of Greek fire to a console.

Her breath caught. She let herself dissolve into a spell, encompassing his memories, taking them with her, becoming one with them.

Screaming. The flapping sound of a pegasus wing. A set of reed pipes and brown eyes. Herself, standing in the Labyrinth and smiling cruelly as she gave him advice for his quest. Did she really look like that? Was that how she appeared to the half-bloods – cold and judgemental, a goddess just using them for her playthings?

An enormous bronze statue moving across a courtyard. Laughter. A campfire, flickering in different colors. A hellhound, and the Mississippi River, a silver ribbon below him as he fell from some great height towards its waters.

She was so close. Just one more memory to collect. One more – 

Ares, scowling. And a rope, one side connected to his skin and the other held by a familiar face – Annabeth Chase, daughter of Athena.

Hera paused.

That last memory… she couldn’t erase it.

She knew why, in part. Last year, before the Battle of Manhattan, Percy had taken on a spell – a magical contract with the Styx – which had made him strong enough to fight Kronos. He’d been reluctant to do it, but he had in the end, for the sake of defeating the Titan Lord. And the spell itself… though it was more of a curse, really… it required an anchor. A connection to the mortal world, so that Percy’s newfound strength wouldn’t drive him into either insanity or immortality.

He had picked the girl as his anchor. Hera had known that. But she’d forgotten it.

She bit her lip, still suspended in the abyss of the boy’s memories. If she erased his memory of Chase… it would remove the last remaining barrier between the curse – called the Mark of Achilles, after the hero who had worn it first – and Percy. She could risk him ascending. Whether ascending to godhood or ascending to total insanity? That was up to Percy, really, and she couldn’t control it. But, then again, if she left the memory there… she risked him finding his home before the Romans found him.

She closed her eyes. Took a deep breath and considered. If I do leave it there, the Mark will wash away when he steps over the Little Tiber, anyways. It’s a Greek curse. It can’t survive on Roman land. The thought prodded at her, insistent.

As she was thinking, another memory poked at her head – Ares shouting at Percy. The vision made her snicker. Percy and Ares heavily disliked each other, and that was no secret to anybody in the Olympian world. After all, Percy had won a fight against him once, which was quite a feat and therefore a well-known fact. Hera supposed that she should be on her son’s side… but honestly? Ares used to be honorable and bold, but his personality had deteriorated to brashness and hate over the years, and she was perfectly fine leaving Percy thinking of him as a dumb, rude god who wasn’t worth his attention. If they happened to meet on the Roman side, she could have herself a good laugh watching them banter. Perhaps it would even bring Ares (or Mars) some humiliation.

She thought about it for a moment longer. More memories flowed through her head: A burning shroud. A small figurine bearing Hades’ face, dropped into a pile of snow. A singular big, brown eye, brimming with tears. An awkward hug at the bottom of the ocean with a man he barely recognized. A big smile on a friendly face and the bronze scales of a mechanical dragon.

She let both memories stay. Then she collected the rest and left.

“What will you do with him now?” asked Hades, eyeing Hera warily, as she snapped her fingers and Percy disappeared.

Hera shrugged. “Find somewhere else to keep him. I only need him to sleep for one more week, and then I’ll send him to Lupa.”

Hades studied her like he was trying to figure her out – as if she was a puzzle, or a math problem. Hera raised an eyebrow at him, and he turned away. An expression she couldn’t read crossed the shadows on his face.

“Brother?” she asked, and he chewed his lip.

“Just… good luck, sister,” he said quietly. Hera stared at his turned head.

A heavy feeling settled on her heart when she realized what he’d meant.

Good luck.

I may never see you like this again.

And he would have been right, if that was what he had intended to say to her. 

If her scheme failed, Gaea would destroy them. If her scheme succeeded, then two things could happen: either Zeus would punish her, or…

Or she would forget what she’d become. Because to be completely honest? Taking care of this boy had changed her. In a way she couldn’t understand. In a way that had pushed her to call Hades ‘brother’ and even made her feel a dart of sympathy, when she’d crossed into the child’s memories. In a way that had made her stop calling him by his last name and start calling him a child.

Either way, when this affair was over, that change would snap back to what it used to be. Cold. Cruel. Judgmental. Like how she’d looked in Percy’s memories.

“Thank you,” she answered, her head held high.

And then she vanished in a flash of golden light.

Hera opened her eyes.

Here. She had found the perfect location. Their last stay. The last uncomfortable spot that Percy would have to suffer through before he finally woke up at the Wolf House, where he would get to be even more uncomfortable for the next few months (lucky him.)

It was a cabin on the beach, miles away from New York, and even closer to Camp Half-Blood than she thought she’d dare to go.

She didn’t know what had brought her here. Wait, no, she did. She had seen pictures of this place hanging up on the Sally Jackson’s apartment walls. Photographs of a younger Percy and his mother smiling at the camera. Even a painting, bought from some random vendor who had been hanging out on the beach.

Montauk. A Jackson family tradition. They used to come here every summer, before Percy found Camp Half-Blood and suddenly his summers were occupied.

Hera shouldn’t have known that fact. She shouldn’t have known even an inkling about ‘Jackson family traditions’.

But she was the goddess of motherhood, she supposed. Perhaps just a few of Sally Jackson’s unheard prayers and words had slipped their way into her mind over the years, after all.

She exhaled. Then she walked up to one of the cabins, where she’d teleported Percy. The door was unlocked; and so she entered easily, inhaling the salty ocean air and dust hanging in the cheap cabin. Outside was the sound of crashing waves. Percy was lying in one of the bunks, silent, sleeping, as he’d been for months.

Briefly, Hera wondered if Sally had ever come here searching for her son, in the past year that he’d been missing.

She suspected so. It would have been a good place to check. 

Well, he wasn’t there when she searched for him, she thought bitterly. But he is now.

Maybe –  maybe – her eyes watered on Sally Jackson’s behalf.

Percy gasped.

His throat hurt. His eyesight was blurry. He was flat on his back, crumpled leaves and twigs underneath him and a damp spring mist in the air.

Shakily, he sat up. His surroundings started to clarify themselves – a crumbling house-like structure, dotted with redwoods and rubble. In front of him was a large wolf with dark fur and luminous red eyes. Something inside him twitched. He had the feeling that he should have been more panicked at the sight of the wolf, but he couldn’t bring himself to be. He felt oddly calm, in fact.

He exhaled heavily. Closed his eyes, bleary and tired. The sun felt too bright, the sound of the wind too loud, the texture of the dirt against his hands too sharp. Like he’d been asleep for a long time and his senses were determined to make up for what he’d lost.

Hera watched him wake. She was invisible, hovering only a few feet away as Lupa nudged Percy and barked at him.

Her time caring for him was over, Hera supposed. After he found out what she’d done… after he discovered that she’d taken his memories… Percy would go right back to hating her, as usual.

Though – if she was being truthful to herself – he would have hated her either way, because he’d hated her before she took his memories, too. She was the only one who had softened slightly while caring for him. She was the only one who had let the thread of hatred between them falter slightly. She was the only one who had made a habit of checking that he was alive, of ensuring his safety.

And now it was over.

A shell started to grow over her. A shadow. A misgiving.

Hera was an immortal, after all.

And mortals… well, their lives were just so short.

She was not made to be a mother. She was not made to love such fragile things, that broke so quickly.

She left.

“So fragile they are,” Hestia whispered, and Hera looked up into her sister’s eyes.

Ah, yes. The goddesses of marriage and the hearth. Motherhood and family. Children and the home. They spent a lot of time together. Today they were seated in front of the Olympian hearth, basking in its warmth.

“What are?” Hera asked, though she had the feeling that she already knew the answer.

“The mortals, of course.” Hestia poked at the flame with her finger, and it heightened slightly. “Though I suppose that makes them much more valuable. The most breakable things are always more precious.”

Hera wondered if her sister knew something that she didn’t. That was often the case.

“I suppose so,” she murmured, and the shell over her began to fall away. A sunray. A bit of a wish.

Something in her bloomed .