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Percy turned sixteen today.

The thought had been sitting with him for hours, strange and heavy and impossible to put down. 

It followed him long after the pavilion emptied, after the last pieces of blue birthday cake were passed around and the campers who were still standing tried their best to celebrate. It remained when the laughter faded from the beach, when the fires burned down to glowing embers, and when everyone finally disappeared into cabins that held fewer demigods than they had at the beginning of the summer.

He had turned sixteen.

He lay awake in his bunk in Cabin Three, staring at the wavering reflections the moon cast across the ceiling. The windows were open, letting in the salt-heavy breeze rolling off Long Island Sound, and the thin curtains stirred each time it passed through.

The cabin carried traces of the celebration. Someone, probably Grover, had left a green sweatshirt hanging over the back of a chair. There were crumbs on the floor that Percy had been too tired to sweep up and a stack of letters he had not yet brought himself to open.

Everything looked so painfully ordinary.

That might have been the worst part.

Birthday cake and wrapping paper did not belong in the same world as shattered buildings and funeral shrouds. They did not belong beside the memory of Manhattan burning beneath a bloodred sky, or the sound of monsters filling the streets, or the terrible stillness that followed every time someone Percy knew stopped breathing. Those things should not have been able to exist only hours apart. 

He should not have been able to wash the blood from his hands, change into clean clothes, and sit at a table while his friends sang to him.

But he had.

Now he was supposed to sleep.

His entire body ached with an exhaustion so deep it seemed to have settled into his bones. His muscles felt heavy against the mattress, and even breathing made his ribs protest beneath the fresh shirt he had pulled on after his shower. If he had been tired after the Labyrinth, this was something else entirely. This was a hollowed-out kind of exhaustion, the kind that should have dragged him into unconsciousness the moment his head touched the pillow.

Instead, every time Percy closed his eyes, Kronos raised the knife again.

Percy saw the golden light burning behind Luke’s eyes. He heard the roar of battle beyond the throne room and the terrible, measured calm in Kronos’s voice. He felt the weight of Riptide in his hand and the sickening realization that it did not matter how hard he fought, because he could not strike the final blow. The prophecy had never promised that he would know what to do. It had only promised that the choice would come.

Then Annabeth was moving.

No matter how many times the memory returned, Percy could never make himself ready for it. She threw herself between him and the blade again and again, her body twisting with the impact. Her eyes widened. Her breath left her in a small, broken sound he could still hear more clearly than all the screaming in Manhattan.

Sometimes, when Percy blinked, he saw her blood.

It had been warm on his hands. Too warm. There had been so much of it staining his fingers, soaking through her shirt while he tried to hold the wound closed. He remembered saying her name as if it were the only word he had ever learned. 

He remembered the way pain tightened her face and how frighteningly limp she had felt in his arms, as though the force that had always seemed to radiate from her was slowly slipping beyond his reach. 

Percy had never known Annabeth that way. To him, she had always been the girl who argued with gods, carried entire cities inside her mind, and charged into battle with a knife in her hand. 

She had always occupied more space in Percy’s life than anyone else, until he could no longer tell where his thoughts ended and she began.

The memory changed after that. Annabeth’s blood became Luke’s face. Kronos’s golden eyes flickered, and for one impossible second, Luke looked out through them. Not the enemy Percy had spent years fighting. Not the person who had betrayed them. Just the lost nineteen-year-old boy Annabeth had followed into the woods when she was seven years old, clawing his way back into control long enough to ask her whether she had ever loved him.

Luke had taken the knife. He had found the one vulnerable place on his body and driven the blade beneath his arm. Percy could hear the sound of it entering, could still see Luke fold around the wound as Kronos’s power tore itself apart inside him. Olympus had begun to shake. Light had filled everything. Percy remembered gripping Annabeth’s hand and waiting for the world to end.

Some part of him was still waiting.

Percy sucked in a sharp breath and reached behind himself, pressing his palm against the center of his lower back.

The skin there was whole. No wound, no blood, not even the lingering soreness that should have followed a night of fighting. The curse of Achilles still held, leaving every other part of him unnaturally untouched. But beneath his hand was the single vulnerable point he had chosen in the River Styx, the one place where a blade could enter, where his otherwise invincible body could still be killed.

He had watched Luke find that same fragile place beneath his own arm. He had watched the knife disappear into it and understood, with terrible clarity, how quickly invincibility could become death.

He rolled onto his other side and pulled the sheet higher, closing his eyes once more. Immediately, Annabeth fell into his arms again.

Percy sat up.

For a while, he remained on the edge of the bed with his elbows braced against his knees. His hair was damp near the roots from the shower, though the ends had dried into a mess of uneven blond curls around his forehead. He dragged both hands over his face and tried to breathe the way his mother always told him to when panic tightened around his lungs: slowly, one breath at a time, focusing on something real.

The floor was cold beneath his feet.

The ocean was close.

He was sixteen.

It didn’t feel real at all.

Sixteen had been less of an age than a deadline. It was the final line of a prophecy that had followed him since he was twelve, even before he understood the words. 

Sixteen had been a blade hanging above his head. A locked door at the end of a hallway he had been walking toward no matter how often he tried to stop. Every birthday had brought him closer, and every summer had taken something from him on the way.

At twelve, he had believed there might be rules to being a demigod. At thirteen, he had learned that even monsters could wear familiar faces. At fourteen, he had watched Annabeth disappear over the edge of a cliff and he had begun to understand just how much of him had been taken with her. At fifteen, he had descended into the Labyrinth while Kronos built himself a body.

Then sixteen arrived, and Percy had gone to Manhattan prepared to die.

He had not said that aloud. Not to his mother when he hugged her goodbye. Not to Grover when they stood together on the bridge. Not to Annabeth when she looked at him as if she could see every fear he had tried to bury. But the certainty had lived inside him anyway. Percy had entered the battle believing the prophecy would take his life, and some quiet part of him had made peace with it because there had been no other choice.

He had thought about the people he would leave behind. His mom. Paul. Grover. Tyson.

Annabeth.

He had thought about her most of all.

Percy realized, with a fear that felt almost ridiculous after everything he had faced, that he had no idea what happened next.

Kronos was gone. Luke had made his choice. The gods had sworn on the River Styx to claim their children and honor the minor gods. Cabins would be built. The fallen would be buried and remembered. Camp would repair what it could, and eventually, the mortal world would explain away the destruction in Manhattan as a storm or an earthquake or some other disaster easier to understand than the truth.

Everyone would continue.

Percy had to learn to as well.

He should have felt relieved. For the first time in years, no prophecy was dragging him toward something terrible. No god had appeared with a quest. No one was waiting for him to save the world before a specific birthday. Tomorrow belonged to him in a way no day ever had before.

The freedom of it terrified him.

He had spent so long learning how to die that he had forgotten to imagine what living might look like. He did not know whether he was supposed to return to school in September and pretend he cared about algebra. He did not know if his mom would still check on him during the night or if Paul would keep the news playing quietly in the kitchen because he was afraid of what Percy might see. He did not know how camp could ever feel like home again when so many beds would remain empty.

He did not even fully know what was happening between him and Annabeth.

The thought of her made something turn over softly beneath his ribs.

She had kissed him.

Earlier that afternoon, surrounded by the people who had survived with them, Annabeth had pulled him close and kissed him while the entire camp erupted around them. Percy had barely been able to hear himself think over the cheering, the laughter, and Clarisse shouting something he was probably grateful he had missed. He remembered Annabeth’s fingers curling into his shirt. He remembered the warmth of her mouth, the faint taste of salt and frosting, and the moment the rest of the world disappeared so completely that Percy could have sworn even the ocean had gone quiet.

Then everyone had thrown them into the lake.

Afterward, there had been no time to ask what the kiss meant. There had been too many people wanting to speak to them, too many wounds being treated, too many arrangements to make for the dead. Annabeth had spent most of the evening with her injured arm held carefully against her body, accepting congratulations with a tired smile that never quite reached her eyes. Percy had wanted to go to her. He had wanted to take her somewhere quiet and ask every question crowding his mind.

Instead, he had watched her from across the pavilion, reassuring himself over and over that she was still there.

The memory settled over him now, softening something sharp inside his chest. For one brief moment, he could think of Annabeth without seeing her bleed. He could remember the pressure of her lips instead. The warmth of her fingers, the soft skin of her waist beneath his hands. The way she had looked at him immediately before the campers lifted them from the ground, startled and happy and almost shy in a way Percy had never seen from her.

He looked toward the windows. Beyond the thin curtains, the night remained dark, but the moon laid a silver path across the water as though the sea itself were offering him somewhere to go.

He’s sixteen, and last night, he didn’t expect to be alive long enough to learn what it felt like.

The thought entered quietly, without the sharpness of the memories before it.

Percy let it remain.

He tried lying down once more, but the cabin seemed to have grown smaller around him. The silence pressed close from every direction. His heartbeat refused to settle, too loud and too fast in the darkness, and the bed felt wrong beneath a body that had spent the night before fighting for its life.

Finally, Percy pushed the sheet aside.

He changed into a clean pair of shorts and tugged an old camp sweatshirt over his T-shirt, then he shoved his feet into his sneakers without bothering to tie them properly. At the door, he hesitated with one hand resting on the knob.

Part of him felt foolish for leaving. There was nowhere he needed to be. No one was waiting for him. The ocean would still be there in the morning.

But Percy was beginning to understand that morning was not guaranteed merely because the battle had ended. He had been given this night, though. This one strange, meaningless stretch of hours in which the world did not need saving and nobody needed him to be a hero.

For now, that would have to be enough.

He opened the door and stepped outside.

Outside, Camp Half-Blood was eerily quiet.

Percy eased the door shut behind him, but the hinges gave a faint groan. The sound traveled across the darkened green with nowhere else to go, and for one ridiculous second, Percy felt as though he had disturbed the entire camp. He waited for a light to flicker on in one of the neighboring cabins. For a window to open. For someone to call his name and ask where he thought he was going so late.

Nothing happened.

No one came looking for him.

Percy stood with one hand resting on the door and looked out at the camp he had spent years fighting to reach again.

Moonlight washed the cabins in pale silver, dulling their mismatched colors until they seemed almost unfamiliar. From a distance, everything was where it had always been. The buildings curved around the green in their uneven horseshoe. The dining pavilion stood on the hill. Beyond it, the woods formed the same dark wall at the edge of camp, concealing monsters, boundaries, and paths Percy had walked so many times that he knew where they turned even when he could not see them.

If he kept his eyes unfocused, it almost looked unchanged.

He could imagine that this was any other summer night. He could pretend that campers were asleep inside after an ordinary day of sword practice and canoe races. That the exhausted silence came from climbing the lava wall or being kept awake too late by the Hermes cabin, rather than fighting a war in the streets of Manhattan.

Then Percy noticed the weapons.

A collection of swords and spears had been propped against the side of the Ares cabin, waiting to be cleaned. Celestial bronze that had shone beneath the sunlight only days ago was dulled by soot, scratches, and the powdery remains of monsters. A shield lay facedown in the grass, one of its leather straps torn completely through. Someone had left a knife on the steps of the Hermes cabin with a dark stain dried along its edge.

Percy looked away before he could decide whose it had been.

The rest of camp came into focus around him. Several windows had been boarded over with uneven pieces of wood. One of the Athena cabin’s steps had split down the middle, and scraps of lumber were stacked beside it for repairs. A toolbox sat open in the grass, its contents abandoned when the celebration began. Near the Apollo cabin, rolls of bandages and empty bottles of nectar overflowed from a wooden crate. Bloody strips of gauze had been collected inside a basin that no one had remembered to carry away.

Camp had been too busy preparing for a war to repair the damage left by the last one. Every broken step and cracked window looked like something they had promised to return to if there was a camp left to come home to.

There was because Percy had made sure of it.

He had spent the entire evening being thanked. Campers he barely knew had clasped his shoulder or pulled him into exhausted embraces. They called him a hero. They told him he had saved them. Even the gods had looked at him as though Percy had done something extraordinary enough to earn a place among them.

But the victory did not feel like his.

It belonged to Beckendorf, who had detonated the Princess Andromeda knowing he would not make it off the ship. It belonged to Silena, who had ridden into battle beneath Clarisse’s armor because she could no longer bear what her mistakes had cost them. It belonged to every demigod who had followed Percy onto Manhattan’s bridges and held their position against an army that outnumbered them.

It belonged to Luke, who had found enough of himself beneath Kronos to make one final choice.

Percy had survived long enough to receive everyone’s gratitude. He didn’t know what to do with it.

He started walking.

His sneakers moved quietly through the grass, taking him between cabins whose doors were shut against the night. Percy tried not to imagine what waited behind them, but the thoughts came anyway. Campers were asleep in rooms that suddenly felt too large. Some of them had an empty bunk above their own. Others had a brother or sister’s belongings folded inside a trunk no one had found the courage to open.

By morning, someone would begin deciding what to do with those things.

Percy wondered if the beds would be stripped immediately or left untouched until the end of summer. He wondered whether the cabins would argue over who had to clean them. He wondered if anyone else was lying awake and listening for breathing from the bed beside theirs before remembering no one was there.

Percy slowed beside the darkened Hephaestus cabin, where the forge sat silent. 

He could almost picture Beckendorf on the steps, grease covering his hands as he patiently explained some machine Percy only partly understood. Beckendorf would have known how to repair the broken windows and damaged steps. He would have put away the abandoned tools and already made a plan for tomorrow.

But the doorway remained empty. Percy forced himself to keep walking, struck by how much noise people made simply by being alive. The footsteps against cabin floors, creaking beds, whispers and badly muffled laughter after curfew. Camp had always been full of sounds he barely noticed. 

Now every missing voice had become its own kind of silence.

His gaze traveled toward the fire pit, though it was hidden from view by the cabins. Earlier, it had held the shrouds of the dead. Silena’s. Beckendorf’s. Michael Yew’s. The others who had followed Percy into Manhattan and would never return to these cabins.

The smoke from the shrouds seemed to linger in the air. Percy stood among campers who had lost siblings and friends while they celebrated that he had not become another person to mourn.

No one resented him for surviving. Somehow, that only made the guilt heavier.

Percy lowered his head and shoved his hands farther into the pocket of his sweatshirt. He was still invulnerable. A sword could strike his chest or an arrow could catch him in the throat, and the weapons would fail before his body did. He had walked through a war with death glancing off his skin while the people around him bled.

Annabeth had bled.

Percy’s stomach tightened.

He followed the path away from the cabin green before the thought could become a memory. Gravel shifted beneath his shoes as he walked toward the beach. The smell of smoke and ambrosia gradually faded, replaced by cool salt air. Ahead, the ocean moved against the shore in long, steady breaths.

The sound reached for something inside him.

The sea had always made Percy feel as though the scattered pieces of himself could be drawn back together. He did not have to explain anything to it. The ocean knew every version of him. The frightened twelve-year-old who had first learned Poseidon was his father, the angry boy who had stood beneath the sky and demanded that the gods listen, and the sixteen-year-old who had turned down immortality without knowing what he intended to do with the mortal life he had chosen.

He wanted to sit close enough to the water that the tide could wash the battle from his mind. He wanted the waves to drown out Kronos’s voice and the sound of Annabeth’s breath leaving her when her arm broke or when the knife struck and the poison came with it. He wanted to feel something that had existed before the war and would continue long after it.

Most of all, he wanted to be alone somewhere that did not feel empty.

Percy expected the beach to be deserted. The campers had exhausted themselves celebrating, and anyone from the infirmary would be under strict orders not to leave bed. He imagined sitting at the shoreline until his breathing matched the rhythm of the waves, then returning to Cabin Three before anyone knew he had gone.

He had nearly reached the sand when he saw her.

At first, there was only a small shape near the water, half-shadowed by the dunes. Percy stopped so abruptly that gravel skidded beneath his shoes. His body reacted before his mind could identify her. His hand moved toward his pocket for Riptide and the ocean surged in response to the sudden alarm inside him.

Then the figure turned slightly.

Percy recognized the slope of her shoulders.

Everything inside him went still.

Annabeth sat near the shoreline with her knees drawn toward her chest. She had chosen a place just beyond the reach of the water, though the waves occasionally stretched close enough to darken the sand beside her bare feet. An oversized orange Camp Half-Blood sweatshirt hung from her shoulders and covered most of the sleep shorts beneath it. She held her injured arm carefully against her body, the loose sleeve pulled over part of the bandaging as though she had dressed herself without wanting to look too closely at the wound.

Her hair was down.

Percy had never paid much attention to the exact way Annabeth fixed her hair before a battle. He only knew that she always secured it somehow, pulling it away from her face so no enemy could grab it and no loose strand could interfere with the knife in her hand. Before Manhattan, she had gathered the long braids into a high ponytail that fell between her shoulder blades.

The ponytail was gone now.

Hundreds of small braids and curls fell freely down her back in dark, uneven waves, slightly mussed from the battle, the lake, and the long day that followed. A few had worked loose around her face, curling softly against her cheeks and forehead. Others had flattened beneath the hood of her sweatshirt before spilling over her shoulders. The sight of it affected Percy more than it should have.

Her hair was down. The war was over.

He tried to make those two facts connect inside him, but his mind resisted. Annabeth without her battle-ready ponytail or singular braid should have made her look relaxed. Instead, it made her seem unguarded, vulnerable in a way that made his heart beat painfully behind his ribs.

She was sitting with her back partially turned to the path. Her knife was nowhere within reach. Her shoulders were rounded with exhaustion, and her bare feet rested defenselessly in the sand. Her chin rested over her tucked knees, her arms wrapped around her legs as if she was physically hugging the broken pieces of herself back together.

The sweatshirt concealed most of the bandages, but he could see the careful stiffness in her posture. He saw the faint bruising along her cheek, the scrape near her jaw, and the exhaustion darkening the skin beneath her eyes.

Then he saw the slow rise and fall of her chest beneath the oversized sweatshirt, and the uneasiness that had been scattered across his chest started to loosen.

Percy had watched Will Solace treat her wound. He had spoken to her throughout the day, held her hand while the shrouds burned, and felt her mouth against his in front of the entire camp. He knew Annabeth had survived, but some frightened part of him remained in the throne room with her blood hot against his hands. Watching her breathe unraveled the painful knot inside of him that reassurance alone had not been able to reach.

She was alive, and the relief of it was so immense that his throat ached with everything he could not yet say.

She looked small sitting beneath the open sky. The ocean stretched endlessly before her, dark and enormous, while the oversized sweatshirt swallowed her shorter frame. Percy had grown enough over the past year that the top of her head barely reached his shoulder now. He noticed the difference whenever she tilted her chin to argue with him or rose slightly onto her toes to look him directly in the eyes.

When Percy was twelve, she had seemed older than him even though she wasn’t. Smarter, sharper, and infinitely more certain. She had walked through the world like someone who had already studied the blueprints. Even when she did not know the answer, she carried herself as though she would find it eventually.

She had carried the sky across her shoulders and emerged from beneath it still capable of standing. And at sixteen, he had watched her throw herself in front of a blade meant for him.

He had not understood until that moment that Annabeth was the one thing in his life he could not survive losing.

Not his powers. Not camp. Not even the approval of his father or the gods.

Her.

The realization had been inside him long before he found words for it. It had lived in every reckless decision he made to find her, every argument that frightened him because her anger mattered more than anyone else’s, and every moment he searched a crowded room until he found her face.

Now she was sitting alone at the edge of the sea, and Percy’s first instinct was not to call her name but to move closer, as if he needed to stand within reach of her before he could trust that she was real.

Gravel shifted beneath his shoe.

Annabeth’s entire posture changed. She turned sharply toward the path, her good hand moving instinctively toward the place where her knife should have been. The sudden motion pulled at her injury, and Percy saw pain tighten across her face before she controlled it.

He stepped out of the shadows before she could force herself to move again, and the moment her gaze found him, the tension drained from her body so quickly that Percy felt something inside his own chest loosen with it. For a few quiet seconds, neither of them spoke.

Annabeth looked him over with the same careful attention he had given her. Her eyes moved from his untied sneakers to the sweatshirt pulled over his frame. They lingered briefly near his side, as though she knew he had been touching the vulnerable point on his lower back again, even if she could not see it.

Then she looked at his face.

Percy wondered what she found there. He wondered if the moonlight concealed how tired he was or if she could see the battle still moving behind his eyes. Annabeth had always been able to look at him and discover things he had not admitted to himself yet.

She didn’t ask why he was awake. 

He could have asked her. He wanted to ask if her arm hurt, whether she had dreamed about Luke, or if she had come here because the Athena cabin felt too empty. He wanted to know how long she had been sitting alone and why she had not come to find him.

But asking would mean expecting her to explain something Percy could not explain to himself either.

So Percy followed the rest of the path onto the beach, feeling Annabeth’s gaze remain on him as he approached. When he came close enough for the moonlight to reveal the tired softness in her expression, she turned back toward the ocean and shifted slightly to one side, opening a place for him in the sand beside her. 

Percy lowered himself into the sand, leaving several careful inches between them.

“Hi,” Annabeth said softly.

“Hey.”

Her mouth curved at one corner, barely enough to be called a smile, and she turned back toward the water. 

The space between them felt much larger than it was. Earlier, Annabeth had kissed him in front of the entire camp as though she had been waiting years to do it. Percy could remember her fingers twisted into his shirt to pull him down and the warmth of her mouth against his, but neither of them had found a private moment to talk about what came after.

Now they were alone, and Percy had no idea whether the kiss meant he was allowed to touch her, to pull her close to him. He kept his hands between his knees, resisting the quiet urge to close the space himself.

Annabeth’s camp necklace had fallen outside her sweatshirt, and Percy’s gaze caught briefly on the ring her father had given her when she was little. He looked away before she could read the questions in his face. 

For several minutes, they watched the waves move across the dark shore. Percy could feel the warmth of her beside him, close enough that the wind occasionally brushed her braids against his shoulder. He knew how to stand between Annabeth and a blade, but Percy had never learned how to reach for her when there was nothing left to fight.

Annabeth closed the distance herself.

Her shoulder settled against his, followed by the gentle weight of her head. Percy hesitated for only a moment before slipping an arm around her, and when she curled her fingers into the fabric near his waist, he drew her closer and felt the lines of her body pressed against the side of his.

Annabeth exhaled against him, soft and tired. Percy rested his cheek against her braids and breathed in salt and the faint trace of campfire smoke. Neither of them spoke, but with her tucked against his side, the silence no longer felt quite so empty.

They stayed that way until Percy lost track of how long they had been sitting there. The night moved quietly around them, measured only by the waves and the occasional tightening of Annabeth’s fingers in his sweatshirt.

Then her stomach growled.

Annabeth went still against him.

Percy looked down, and she pressed her face farther into his shoulder as though she could hide there until the moment passed. A smile tugged at his mouth, the first one that had felt natural all night.

“Don’t,” she warned softly.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were going to.”

Percy let her hear the smile in his voice. “I was going to say I’m hungry too.”

That was true. He had barely eaten during the celebration. There had been cake and plates passed into his hands, but everything had happened too quickly for him to taste any of it. Too many people had wanted to speak to him, and every time the crowd parted, his attention had found its way back to Annabeth.

Especially after she kissed him.

“I think there’s some cake left,” he said. “Unless the Hermes cabin found it.”

Annabeth finally lifted her head. Her braids slid from his shoulder, leaving the night air strangely cool where she had been resting. “We should probably check before they do.”

Percy stood and brushed the sand from his shorts. When he turned, Annabeth was already getting to her feet beside him.

They stayed close as they crossed camp.

At first, Percy thought it was only because the path narrowed between the cabins. Their shoulders had brushed, then Annabeth’s hand slipped around his bicep when they stepped over a pile of lumber left near the Athena cabin. She kept it there after the path cleared, her fingers resting lightly against his sleeve.

Percy did not mention it. He only shortened his stride to match hers.

When they reached a broken section of the walkway, his hand found her waist without thought. He steadied her over the loose boards and started to let go, but his fingers lingered for a moment before falling back to his side. Annabeth’s hand slid down his arm soon after, and their pinkies caught between them.

Neither seemed willing to be the first to pull away.

By the time they reached the pavilion, their hands had settled together properly. There had been no question or nervous glance, only Annabeth’s fingers slowly threading through his and Percy closing his hand around them.

The contact did not feel like an answer to what had happened between them earlier. It felt simpler than that. Each time Percy’s mind began drifting somewhere darker, Annabeth gave his hand a small squeeze and brought him back to the path beneath their feet. When she moved half a step ahead, his arm tightened instinctively, keeping her within reach.

The dining pavilion was empty when they arrived. Moonlight stretched across the tables, catching on abandoned cups and plates no one had gathered after the celebration. Someone had covered what remained of Percy’s birthday cake with an overturned bowl, apparently the only defense they could manage against the Hermes cabin.

Percy lifted it and found one uneven piece left. The blue icing had been smeared along one side, and part of the cake had gone dry around the edges.

Annabeth examined it. “That looks terrible.”

“You were the one who wanted to come all the way here.”

“I was starving. My judgment was compromised.”

Percy almost smiled again. “Good thing I’m here.”

He found two plates, divided the cake, and placed the softer half in front of her without drawing attention to it. Her eyes flicked from the larger piece to Percy’s face, but she only picked up her fork and took a bite.

For a little while, they ate in comfortable silence.

Then Annabeth reached across the table and stole a piece from Percy’s plate.

He looked at her. “You have your own.”

“Mine tastes different.”

“It came from the same cake.”

She considered that as she chewed, then reached for another bite. “Yours is better.”

Percy moved his plate a little closer to her and watched her steal another bite. He thought of all the things he had expected from his sixteenth birthday. A prophecy. A choice. Possibly the end of the world.

He had never imagined sitting across from Annabeth after midnight, sharing a ruined piece of blue cake.

A streak of icing caught at the corner of her mouth. Percy reached across the table before he could think better of it and brushed it away with his thumb.

The small movement brought them both to a quiet pause.

His hand remained against her cheek, his thumb resting near the edge of her mouth. In the moonlight, he could see the tiredness in her face and the question that softened her eyes. She did not move away. Instead, she turned slightly into his palm, so gently Percy might have missed it if every part of him had not been paying attention to her.

Annabeth’s gaze slipped from his eyes to his mouth, lingering there long enough to make Percy’s breath catch. For one suspended moment, he thought she might lean across the table and kiss him again.

But the quiet between them felt fragile, something they had only just managed to build. Percy was afraid that speaking, or moving too quickly, might ask them to name things neither of them was ready to explain.

So he let his thumb pass once over her cheek before lowering his hand.

Annabeth looked down at their plates, but not before Percy saw the faint smile beginning at the corner of her mouth.

Annabeth slipped her hand through Percy’s arm again, and he let her guide them between the cabins.

“The Athena roof needs to be replaced,” she said after a moment. “The frame is damaged. Patching it would only make it someone else’s problem next summer.”

Percy glanced at her. “You figured that out in the dark?”

“I have eyes, Seaweed Brain.”

There was a little more life in her voice now. As they walked, she pointed out which walls could be repaired and where the new cabins might fit around the green. Percy listened as her ideas gathered momentum, quietly relieved by the certainty returning to her words. Annabeth sounded most like herself when she was building something, even if the first version existed only inside her mind.

“Do you think the gods will actually do it?” she asked.

“They swore on the Styx.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

Percy looked toward the unfinished spaces between the cabins. “Then we make sure they do.”

Annabeth’s hold on his arm tightened slightly. “You really thought of all of it.”

“Not all of it.”

“More than they did.”

They reached the Hermes cabin and slowed. Its windows were dark, but Percy could picture how crowded it would be again in the morning, full of unclaimed demigods and children whose parents had never been given cabins of their own.

“Luke used to hate how many of us they shoved in there,” Annabeth said quietly. “He said one day he was going to make them pay attention.”

Her fingers brushed the camp beads resting near the collar of her sweatshirt. Percy did not tell her that Luke had chosen the wrong way to do it. She knew that better than anyone.

“Maybe this was his way,” Percy said instead. “In the end.”

Annabeth looked at him, her expression softening with something too complicated to be called relief. “Maybe.”

Percy stared at the dark cabin. “It still feels wrong.”

“What does?”

“That we get to make plans for tomorrow.” He swallowed. “Sometimes it feels like moving on means we’re leaving them behind.”

Annabeth was quiet for a moment. Then her hand slid down his arm, and she threaded her fingers through his.

“Living isn’t the same as forgetting them, Percy.”

He wanted to believe that. He was not sure he knew how yet, but Annabeth’s hand was warm in his, and she did not ask him to understand it tonight.

Their wandering eventually carried them to the canoe lake. Moonlight lay across the water, broken only by the slow movement of the current, and the dock creaked faintly beneath their weight as they walked to the end.

Percy lowered himself onto his back and folded one arm beneath his head. Annabeth settled beside him, leaving a few inches between them. They looked up at the stars without speaking, but the distance gradually disappeared. Their shoulders touched first. Then Annabeth’s hand found his against the wooden boards, her fingers slipping easily between his.

A few minutes later, her head came to rest against his shoulder.

Percy turned slightly toward her, and Annabeth followed the movement until she was tucked partly against his chest, her braids spreading across his sweatshirt. He could feel her warmth through the fabric and the steady rhythm of her breathing near his heart. After so many nights spent wondering where she was, whether he would reach her in time, or if either of them would survive long enough to find each other again, having her here felt almost too gentle to bear.

“Are you going back to school?” Annabeth asked.

Percy looked down at her. “Is that seriously what you’re thinking about right now?”

“Some of us think about the future.”

“I saved Manhattan. That has to count as enough extra credit to pass tenth grade.”

“You haven’t even started tenth grade.”

“Preemptive extra credit.”

Annabeth tilted her face toward him. “That isn’t a thing.”

“It should be. I’m trying to plan ahead.”

“You once forgot about a history paper until the night before it was due, and your solution was to hope your teacher got attacked by a monster.”

“In my defense, it was a statistically reasonable possibility.”

A laugh escaped Percy before he could stop it. The sound felt strange in his chest, too light for everything that was sitting heavily inside him, and for a moment he almost regretted it.

Then Annabeth laughed too.

It was not the faint, tired smile she had offered him on the beach. It was real laughter, warm against his chest as she tucked her face closer to hide it. Percy felt it move through her, and something inside him loosened in response.

As their laughter softened into silence, Percy traced his thumb slowly over the back of Annabeth’s hand.

“I haven’t really thought about September,” he admitted. “I didn’t think I’d have to.”

Annabeth was quiet long enough for him to wonder if he had said too much. Then she settled more fully against him.

“We can think about it now.”

Percy looked back at the stars.

She probably did not realize what the word we did to him, how easily it placed her inside a future he had been too frightened to imagine. September was still uncertain. School, camp, and everything beyond tonight remained a collection of questions he could not answer.

The quiet returned, but it no longer felt as though it were waiting for one of them to break beneath it. Annabeth remained tucked against Percy’s chest, her fingers loosely woven through his, while the lake shifted beneath the stars.

Percy should have been content to stay that way. Instead, his thoughts kept returning to their kiss from earlier that afternoon. He tried to bring it up three separate times.

The first time, he opened his mouth and discovered he had forgotten every word he had ever learned. The second time, he became deeply interested in a constellation he was fairly certain did not exist. By the third, he had started pulling at a loose thread on his sweatshirt with enough concentration that Annabeth finally lifted her head.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“You’ve been trying to unravel your sleeve for five minutes.”

Percy released the thread. “I was thinking.”

“I could tell.”

He looked down at her. “How?”

“You keep opening your mouth and then deciding against it.”

“I could be thinking quietly.”

“You’ve never done anything quietly.”

Percy gave her an offended look, but Annabeth only raised her eyebrows and waited for him to admit what was wrong.

Percy stared at the sky for another second, wishing one of the gods would send him a sign. Preferably something useful, like a sentence written across the stars. Nothing appeared. Apparently, after offering him immortality, the Olympians had decided they had helped enough for one day.

He drew in a breath. “So, are you technically my girlfriend now?”

Annabeth propped herself up to look at him, her brown eyes staring deeply into his own.

“Technically?”

Her expression was impossible to read. Percy immediately wanted to throw himself into the canoe lake and remain underwater until summer ended.

“I mean, you kissed me,” he said. “And then I kissed you back. I think. It happened pretty fast, and then everyone threw us into the lake, so there wasn’t much time to discuss the terms.”

“The terms?”

“I don’t know how this works, Annabeth. Maybe there’s paperwork. An application. Does Athena have to approve it?”

For half a second, she only stared at him. Then the corner of her mouth moved.

“You think my mother has an application for dating me?”

“I think your mother probably has an application for speaking to you.”

“That one has an essay section.”

“I knew it.”

Annabeth smiled, but Percy could feel his own fading. The jokes had bought him a few more seconds, but they had not made the question matter any less.

Her expression softened when she saw the change in his.

“Percy,” she said quietly. “Do you want me to be?”

There were a thousand things he did not know.

He did not know what returning to the mortal world would feel like after watching gods rebuild their thrones from rubble. He did not know how he was supposed to sit in a classroom and worry about exams when he had spent the previous night deciding the fate of Olympus. He did not know what would happen when summer ended or how often the world would ask them to save it again.

He had doubted nearly every choice waiting for him beyond the prophecy.

He didn’t doubt this one.

“Yes.”

The answer left him before Annabeth had finished searching his face.

Percy shifted onto his side so he could look at her properly. “I mean, if you want to. I don’t really know what I’m doing. I’ve never been anyone’s boyfriend before, and I can’t promise I’ll always say the right thing.”

“You rarely say the right thing now.”

“Thanks.”

“I thought we were being honest.”

“We were, but I liked it better when only I was doing it.”

Annabeth laughed softly, and Percy smiled, but the nervousness remained beneath it. He wrapped his fingers around hers.

“I’m serious,” he said. “I’ll probably mess things up. I won’t always know what you need, and sometimes I’ll say something stupid when I should just listen.”

“Sometimes?”

“Most of the time,” he conceded. His smile softened as he looked down at their joined hands, his thumb brushing restlessly over her skin. “But I don’t have to know exactly how this works to know that I want it. I want you to be with me, Annabeth.”

Something vulnerable moved across Annabeth’s face. It was there only briefly, in the way her eyes searched his and her fingers tightened between his, but Percy recognized it because he felt the same fear inside himself. They had spent years circling each other, always interrupted by a quest, a prophecy, or jealousy. Wanting this was easy. Believing they would be allowed to keep it was harder.

Annabeth held his gaze.

“Good,” she whispered. “Because I want to be yours too.”

Percy heard the words, but it took a moment for them to settle.

His girlfriend.

The phrase felt too ordinary for the way it changed everything. It belonged to school hallways and weekend plans, to phone calls made for no reason and hands held beneath restaurant tables. It belonged to a life in which Percy worried about dates instead of wars, and in which Annabeth could be beside him without either of them carrying a weapon.

It was another small piece of a future he had never permitted himself to imagine.

And she had given it to him as simply as if that very future had been waiting for them all along.

Annabeth pushed herself upright and shifted closer until she was kneeling beside him. Percy sat up as well, his long legs stretched across the dock. Even then, she had to tip her face toward his. Her loose braids fell down her back and over one shoulder, and the moonlight softened the exhaustion in her features without hiding it completely.

Percy lifted his hand to her cheek.

His thumb rested just beneath her cheekbone, and Annabeth leaned into his touch with a trust that made his chest tighten. He gave her time to move away, though the thought of her changing her mind frightened him more than he wanted her to know.

Instead, Annabeth rose slightly on her knees and closed the distance between them.

Percy met her halfway, bending toward her as her face tilted up to his. Their lips brushed once, softly enough that it felt almost like a question, before Annabeth’s fingers tightened in the front of his sweatshirt and pulled him the last inch closer.

The kiss at the lake earlier had been bright and sudden, filled with years of waiting and the dizzy relief of surviving long enough to finally reach each other. Percy would never forget the certainty with which Annabeth had kissed him or the happiness that had rushed through him before the campers swept them into the water.

This kiss held the same feelings, only quieter.

There was no cheering crowd around them now, no laughter or hands waiting to pull them apart. Only the faint creak of the dock beneath their knees and the water moving gently below. Percy could take his time feeling the soft pressure of Annabeth’s mouth against his, the warmth of her cheek beneath his palm, and the way she leaned into him as though closeness was no longer something either of them had to pretend they did not want.

His other hand settled at her waist. Annabeth was warm beneath it, the oversized sweatshirt bunching beneath his fingers as he carefully drew her between his knees. She shifted closer without breaking the kiss, one knee brushing his thigh as her free hand slid from his chest to the back of his neck. Her fingertips slipped into the short curls at his nape, and the gentle touch sent warmth spreading beneath Percy’s skin.

He tilted his head and kissed her again, a little deeper this time but no less tender. Annabeth followed his movement easily, her lips parting slightly against his before curving into the beginning of a smile. Percy felt it happen and smiled too, helplessly, until neither of them seemed to know whether they were kissing or simply breathing against each other and trying not to laugh.

Hope felt like the warmth of Annabeth gathered close to him, her fingers playing absently with the curls at the back of his neck, and the knowledge that no quest was waiting to pull one of them away when the kiss ended. For once, they were not reaching for each other before a separation or finding each other in the breathless relief after one. They were choosing this because they wanted it and because, for the first time, they could imagine there might be time for more.

When they finally drew apart, Annabeth remained tucked between his knees. Percy’s hand stayed at her waist, holding her close, while his thumb passed once over the softness of her cheek. Their foreheads rested together, and he could feel her uneven breath against his lips.

Annabeth stayed close when their foreheads separated, her fingers moving softly through the curls at the back of Percy’s neck.

“You were really nervous,” she murmured.

Percy gave her an incredulous look. “I was asking Annabeth Chase to be my girlfriend. Of course I was nervous.”

“You faced Kronos yesterday.”

“That was different.”

“How?”

“I knew he wanted to kill me.”

Annabeth’s laugh was soft enough that Percy felt it more than heard it. “And you thought I might?”

“I wasn’t ruling it out.”

She rolled her eyes, but her smile remained. “You know, you could’ve just asked.”

“I did.”

“After trying to pull your sleeve apart for five minutes.”

“I was waiting for the right moment.”

“You were waiting for Athena to send you an application.”

“Exactly. This is really your mother’s fault.”

Annabeth shook her head and pressed one last, quick kiss to his mouth before shifting beside him. “You took long enough, Seaweed Brain.”

Percy moved until his back rested against one of the dock posts, expecting Annabeth to lie beside him again. Instead, she turned and slowly settled between his legs, curving herself against him until her back rested against his chest. Percy helped her adjust without thinking, one hand finding her waist as she tucked her head into the space between his neck and shoulder.

Then he understood that Annabeth was in his lap.

His arms froze around her.

She must have felt his sudden hesitation because she tilted her face slightly toward him. “Is this okay?”

“Yeah.” The answer came out rougher than he intended, and Percy cleared his throat. “Yeah, it’s more than okay.”

Annabeth relaxed against him. Percy slowly let his arms close around her waist, careful but certain, until she was held securely against his chest. Her body was warm and comfortably solid in his lap, her knees bent alongside his and her cheek resting near his collarbone. When she closed her eyes, the last trace of tension left her face.

Percy looked down at her and forgot how to breathe normally.

It should not have felt as impossible as it did. They had held each other before. Percy had carried her when she was injured and clung to her when the world threatened to pull them apart. But those moments had always been urgent. Their closeness had been another means of survival.

This was different.

Annabeth was not in his arms because she could not stand or because one of them might be taken away. She had simply chosen to rest there. She trusted him enough to close her eyes and give him the weight of her tired body, certain that his arms would remain around her.

A few loose braids had fallen across her shoulder. Percy gathered one between his fingers, winding the end carefully around his index finger before smoothing it back into place. When Annabeth made no move to stop him, he chose another.

“Are you playing with my hair?” Annabeth asked, her eyes still closed.

“Maybe.”

“You’ve been doing it for a while.”

Percy paused, one braid wound loosely around his finger. “Do you want me to stop?”

Annabeth settled a little more comfortably against him. “I didn’t say that.”

His smile pressed softly into her temple as he resumed tracing the end of her braid. “Good. I wasn’t planning to.”

There were stories he knew he would have to tell someday. People would ask about the war, and Percy would tell them what it felt like to stand beneath the sky with its weight crushing him into the earth. He could tell them about entering the River Styx and feeling his body burn down to its most essential pieces. He could describe Kronos on the throne of Olympus, Luke’s final choice, and the moment the world nearly ended around them.

Those were the stories people would expect Percy to tell. Terrible, impossible things large enough to become legends.

He would not tell them that, in quiet moments over the years, he had wished for Annabeth exactly like this. 

Not injured or in danger, not reaching for him because the world was ending, just warm and sleepy in his arms, her head tucked beneath his chin as though she had rested there a hundred times before.

The wish had always embarrassed him with its tenderness. Percy could imagine himself crossing the world to save her and accept it as fact, but wanting something this small felt like revealing too much. It meant admitting he did not only want Annabeth beside him in battles. He wanted her woven into the ordinary parts of his life: sitting beside him while he struggled through homework, stealing from his plate, falling asleep against his shoulder during a movie. He wanted her shoes abandoned beside his front door because she belonged there enough to stop asking where she could leave them.

Those thoughts had never felt like plans. They were brief, impossible dreams Percy kept hidden even from himself, because believing in them would have required him to imagine a life neither of them had been promised.

But Annabeth was here now. Her back was warm against his chest, her hand rested over his, and each quiet breath stirred the fabric near his collar. Percy wound one of her braids around his finger and looked down at the face he had spent years searching for in every crowd.

The moment was real, and it was his to keep.

Not as a prophecy or a story anyone else would tell about him, but as one small, good thing he had wanted for longer than he knew how to admit.

And somehow, impossibly, it was happening. Her head was resting against his neck, her body fitted into the shelter of his arms, and Percy was alive to feel every bit of her weight.

Annabeth shifted slightly. “You’re thinking again.”

“How do you know?”

“Your heart speeds up.”

Percy wondered how long she had been listening to it. His arms tightened around her before he could stop himself.

“I was thinking I could get used to this.”

Annabeth opened her eyes, but she did not lift her head. Her hand came to rest over one of his where it lay against her waist, and her fingers slipped between his.

“Good,” she said softly. “Because I’m comfortable.”

“My legs might eventually go numb.”

“A true hero would make the sacrifice.”

“I already saved the world. You’re asking a lot.”

She smiled and closed her eyes again. “You’ll survive.”

Percy rested his cheek against the top of her head. The dock creaked beneath them, and the lake continued moving quietly under the stars. Tomorrow would arrive with decisions, repairs, and goodbyes neither of them was prepared to make.

But for now, Annabeth was resting in his arms because she wanted to be there.

Percy thought he could survive almost anything for one more moment like this.

Eventually, the night drew them away from the dock.

Percy stood first and offered Annabeth his hand. She placed hers in it and let him pull her carefully to her feet, but once she was steady, neither of them let go. They walked back toward the beach with their fingers intertwined, following the sound of the waves through the sleeping camp.

At the shoreline, they abandoned their shoes in the dry sand and sat close enough for their shoulders to rest together. The tide reached them a few seconds later, cool water gathering around their bare feet before slipping back into the darkness.

Percy felt the sea recognize him.

Its energy moved through his body with every wave, familiar and endless. Earlier, the ocean had reflected everything unsettled inside him, surging whenever his heart raced and retreating when he tried to force himself calm. Now it felt different. Not asleep, but peaceful. Awake in the same quiet way Percy was, no longer waiting for the next disaster to break across the horizon.

Annabeth leaned against him as another wave washed over their ankles. “Better?”

Percy looked down at their joined hands. “A little.”

She nodded as though a little was enough.

They remained there until the water had soaked the hems of their shorts. Then Percy stood without releasing her hand. He did not announce where he was going or ask Annabeth to follow. He simply took one step deeper into the sea.

Annabeth came with him.

There was no moment when either of them decided to go into the water fully dressed. One wave covered their ankles, the next curled around their calves, and soon the tide had reached their knees. Annabeth’s sweatshirt darkened as the lower edge absorbed the seawater, the heavy fabric clinging around her thighs. Her loose braids shifted in the breeze, and several caught against her damp cheeks and neck.

Percy reached up and brushed one away from her face.

His fingers lingered near her jaw. Annabeth looked up at him, but before either of them spoke, a stronger wave rolled toward the shore and struck behind her knees.

She stumbled forward.

Percy caught her around the waist and pulled her against his chest.

The sea would have steadied her if he asked it to. It would have held Annabeth upright, softened every wave around her, and carried her wherever Percy wanted. But his arms had already closed around her, and he trusted them more.

Annabeth’s hands came to rest against him as she found her balance, but she did not step away. Her sweatshirt was wet where it pressed against his clothes, and seawater gathered around their legs before retreating again. Percy kept one arm firm around her waist while his other hand settled against her back.

She studied his face for a moment. “You keep looking at me like that.”

Percy’s fingers grasped the damp fabric at her waist. “Like what?”

“Like you’re checking.”

He could have pretended not to understand. Instead, his eyes moved over her face once more, catching on the faint scrape near her jaw and the exhaustion she could not completely hide.

“I am.”

Annabeth’s expression softened.

Percy lowered his gaze toward the dark water moving around them. The words had lived inside him since the fight, but speaking them felt like giving the memory a shape it could keep.

“When you took that knife for me,” he said quietly, “I thought you were going to die.”

Annabeth inhaled, but Percy continued before fear could close his throat.

“You were in my arms, and there was so much blood. I kept pressing against the wound, but it wouldn’t stop, and I-” His voice faltered. “I really thought that was it. I thought I was going to watch you die because you stepped in front of something meant for me.”

“Percy.”

“I know you’re here.” His eyes returned to hers. “I know you survived. But I can’t stop checking anyway.”

The admission left him feeling strangely exposed. It explained every glance across the pavilion, every instinctive reach for her as they crossed camp, and every breath he had counted while she rested against him. Percy had spent the entire night touching Annabeth as though the warmth of her could convince the part of him still kneeling in the throne room that she had made it out.

Annabeth did not tell him he was being ridiculous. She did not remind him that Will Solace had treated her again or insist that she was fine.

“I thought I was going to lose you too,” she said.

Percy’s brow pulled together. “I’m invulnerable.”

“That didn’t make you safe.” Her gaze did not leave his. “You disappeared into the Styx without telling me. Then you went into that throne room knowing the prophecy could end with your death. You kept walking toward it like you had already decided that was what would happen.”

Percy had no answer for her.

Annabeth’s fingers curled lightly into his shirt. “Every time you moved away from me tonight, I needed to know I could reach you.”

Percy thought of her arm linked through his as they crossed camp, her pinky finding his, and the way she had settled into his lap as though even a few inches between them were too many. He had believed he was the one holding on to her.

All night, Annabeth had been holding on to him too.

She slid one hand upward and placed her palm over his heart. Percy covered it with his own, pressing her fingers more firmly against the beat beneath his clothes.

“Still here,” she whispered.

He looked down at her, at the dark braids clinging to her cheeks, the moonlight caught in her eyes, and the girl who had survived every impossible thing that tried to take her from him.

“So are you.”

Something in Annabeth’s face gave way.

She tilted her chin, and Percy bent toward her until their foreheads met. He kept one arm secure around her waist while his other hand moved to the back of her head, his fingers slipping carefully beneath the damp weight of her braids.

Percy felt her breath against his mouth. The sea gathered around their legs, lifting with the emotion moving through him, but there was no violence in it. The water only held them, alive with the same quiet energy that hummed beneath Percy’s skin.

He waited.

Annabeth rose onto her toes and kissed him.

The first touch of her mouth was soft, almost unbearably so. Percy drew her closer, his palm cradling the back of her head while his fingers spread around her waist. Annabeth leaned into him until there was no space left between their bodies, one hand trapped warmly beneath his over his heart.

She kissed him as if she understood everything Percy had failed to say. Not with desperation, but with recognition. She had survived. He had survived. They had been given this night, this ocean, and the chance to stand in each other’s arms without wondering which of them would be taken first.

Percy kissed her slowly, taking the time he had never believed they would have. Between each gentle press of her mouth, his eyes opened just enough to look at her. He saw drops of seawater caught in her eyelashes and the loose braids resting against her cheeks. He saw the tired shadows beneath her eyes and the way her expression softened each time he kissed her again.

Most of all, he saw that she was here.

Warm beneath his hands. Breathing against his lips. Holding him as tightly as he held her.

When Percy tilted his head, Annabeth’s hand slipped from beneath his and curled behind his neck. Her fingertips moved into his damp curls, keeping him close as their mouths met again. The kiss deepened as Annabeth pulled him closer, her lips parting beneath his with a quiet gasp that sent warmth rushing through Percy. He held her more firmly against him, feeling the faint tremble of her breath between one kiss and the next.

The ocean responded to him without being asked. Water curled around their knees in luminous, restless patterns, each wave rising a little higher before smoothing itself against the shore.

With Annabeth in his arms, the storm inside Percy finally quieted. 

He was still a son of the sea. Restless, powerful, and forever moving, but with her breath warming his lips and her hand resting over the steady beat of his heart, he no longer felt trapped in the current. For the first time in a long time, being alive meant more than simply surviving.

They remained in the water after the kiss ended, holding each other while the waves moved around them. Annabeth rested her forehead against Percy’s chest, and he kept one hand at the back of her head, his fingers tangled gently in her wet braids.

Neither of them promised that everything would be all right. They had lived through too much to believe the future could be made safe simply because they wanted it to be.

Instead, Annabeth asked, “Are you really going back to school?”

Percy sighed into her hair. “You’re not going to let that go, are you?”

“No.”

“Then I guess I’m going back.”

“And passing tenth grade.”

“Let’s not make promises we can’t keep.”

She laughed softly, and Percy felt the sound against his chest.

“What about you?” he asked. “What happens when summer ends?”

Annabeth turned her face enough to look at him. “I’m staying for a while. Someone has to make sure the new cabins are built correctly.”

“Obviously.”

“And then…” She hesitated. “I don’t know yet.”

It was the first time Percy had ever heard Annabeth admit that without immediately trying to fill the uncertainty with a plan. He ran his thumb slowly over the damp fabric at her waist.

“You could come to New York.”

“I’ll come to New York.”

“And I’ll call you.”

“You’d better.”

“You have to answer.”

“That depends on whether you remember to call at a reasonable hour.”

Percy glanced toward the dark sky. “You’re awake now.”

“I’m making an exception.”

They smiled, but a more serious quiet settled between them. Annabeth’s fingers tightened in his shirt.

“No more disappearing,” she said.

Percy knew she was not only talking about the future. She meant the River Styx, the cliff at Westover Hall, and every time one of them had gone somewhere dangerous without knowing whether they would find their way back.

“No more disappearing,” he agreed.

They could not promise they would never be separated. They could not promise that monsters, gods, or another prophecy would not come for them. So they promised what they could: Percy would return to school. Annabeth would design the new cabins. She would come to New York, and he would call her when she wasn’t there. Neither of them would vanish without giving the other something to hold on to.

The promises were ordinary and almost painfully small.

Percy treasured every one.

Eventually, the water began to feel colder against Annabeth, and Percy guided them back toward the shore. Neither bothered changing out of their soaked clothes. Their shoes remained where they had abandoned them in the sand, but instead of putting them on, Percy sat near the water and drew Annabeth down with him.

She settled between his legs with her back against his chest, fitting herself into his arms as though they had already learned how to do this. Percy circled her waist and held her close. Her head rested beneath his chin, hundreds of damp braids spilling over his arms and sticking lightly to his sweatshirt.

The waves reached them there, gathering around their ankles before slipping back into the sea. Every few minutes, Percy lowered his mouth to Annabeth’s hair. He kissed the curls near her temple, then the soft curve of her cheek when she tilted her face toward him. Once, she turned far enough to press a sleepy kiss beneath his jaw before settling against his chest again.

The darkness changed so gradually that Percy nearly missed it.

The sky softened from black to gray. Stars faded one by one, disappearing without ceremony as the shapes of the cabins emerged behind them. The beach became more than moonlight and shadow. Soon, the first pale trace of morning stretched across the horizon.

Percy waited for something to happen.

A monster to rise from the water. A conch horn to sound from camp. A voice to announce that the danger had not truly passed and there was one more thing he had to do before the world was safe.

Nothing came.

Morning arrived without a battle.

No prophecy reached its end as the darkness withdrew. The sun began to rise simply because the night was over, and Percy had lived long enough to see what came after it.

Annabeth had grown quiet in his arms. Her cheek rested over his heart now, and her fingers remained curled into his wet shirt. 

She was not fully awake. Every so often, her thumb moved against the fabric or she pressed another absent kiss near his collarbone, but she trusted him enough to drift close to sleep.

Percy looked down at her.

He still did not know exactly where his life was going. September waited beyond camp, full of school hallways, unfinished assignments, and ordinary days he had never expected to reach. There would be funerals before then. Cabins to rebuild. Grief that would follow them long after the smoke cleared.

None of it had disappeared during the night.

But for once, Percy did not need to know how every piece would fit together. Annabeth Chase had kissed him, the ocean lay calm before them, and everything the previous day had taken and given seemed to settle around them in a silence that asked nothing more of him.

Only yesterday, the gods had offered Percy forever. He had looked at Annabeth and known he didn’t want an eternity that would eventually carry him beyond her, leaving him unchanged while she became another person he could only remember.

Now, with her held against him and the first sunlight touching the water, he understood his choice even more clearly. Immortality could have given him endless time, but it could not have made that time worth living. Percy did not need forever. He only wanted the life ahead of him and the chance to spend as much of it as he could beside Annabeth.

He was sixteen. His girlfriend was tucked against his chest, her cheek resting over his heart and her fingers twisted into the damp fabric of his shirt. The waves gathered around their ankles before rolling back into the sea, only to return a few seconds later.

Percy was sixteen, and he had never been in love before.

But if love was holding Annabeth while the sky slowly brightened around them, if it was the weight of her against him, the salt drying on her skin, and the soft kisses she pressed beneath his jaw whenever she thought he had started drifting, then Percy thought he could love her for the rest of his life.

Easily.

Annabeth stirred and lifted her face toward him. Her eyes were heavy with sleep, but they moved over his expression with the same quiet attention she had given him all night.

“What are you thinking about?” Annabeth asked.

Percy could have told her everything. He could have admitted that he had expected to die before he ever saw this morning, or that the future frightened him whenever he looked at it too directly. He could have told her that holding her felt almost painfully tender because he had wished for moments like this long before he believed they could be real.

Instead, he watched the first sunlight spread across the Sound.

“That this is the first thing after,” he said.

Annabeth followed his gaze to the water. “After what?”

“Everything.”

Understanding softened her expression. “What do you want to do with it?”

Percy looked down at her, at the sleepy warmth in her eyes, the braids spilling over his arms, and her hand resting above the steady beat of his heart.

“Stay here a little longer.”

Annabeth smiled and settled against his chest again. “We can do that.”

For years, Percy had believed sixteen would be the age that took everything from him. Instead, it came and went, and left him with Annabeth in his arms, the sea at his feet, and an entire morning asking nothing of him except that he remain.

Percy couldn’t imagine a better place to begin.