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Percy had always hated fighting with a trident.
It was weird. Camp Half-Blood trained demigods to use as many weapons as they had in storage—and considering they had Helen of Sparta’s old dagger somewhere in the back of the armoury, that was almost all of them. If you wanted to learn to use a weapon and somehow they didn’t have it, there was a chance a friendly Hephaestus kid might make one for you. But only if you asked nicely.
When Percy had returned to camp after his first quest, though, that hadn’t been necessary. Camp had loads of tridents sitting unused in the armoury. It was traditionally the weapon of Poseidon and his children, so in the decades since the oath had seen their numbers dry up, most of them had been untouched. Several Hephaestus cabin counsellors had petitioned over the years for unused weapons to be melted down and reused, Celestial bronze was so scarce, but the tridents had survived long enough for Chiron to fish one out of storage and press it into Percy’s hands.
“This looks to be sized right for you,” he considered, looking down at him. Percy tried to lift it. Its heft felt familiar. He automatically shifted his hands into the correct grip.
Chiron’s thoughtful look turned surprised. “You know how to use one?”
“What?” Percy looked at his trident then back at Chiron. “No? This just seemed the right way to hold it.”
Chiron studied him a moment longer, then nodded and picked up a trident of his own. “Very well. Let’s begin the class.”
Percy was with the Demeter and Aphrodite cabins for training that day. None of the camp counsellors or senior campers specialised in the trident, Chiron explained, so whenever he was training students in how to use them or combat them, it was Chiron who did it. And there were mandatory lessons on fighting tridents. No one knew what weapons their enemies might have one day. Mostly, their drills were run by imitating the gear of a retiarius, a Roman gladiator that had fought with a trident and net. The weight of the weapons in his hands made his stomach roil with disgust. His skin felt cold and clammy.
As soon as they started fighting, it became very obvious that Percy did know how to use a trident. He’d disarmed Silena in seconds, tangling her in his net, despite the fact she was bigger and faster than him. They stared at each other, breathing heavily.
Chiron trotted over. “Do that again,” he ordered. There were murmurs around him.
Percy remembered what had happened when he’d disarmed Luke in his first ever swordfighting lesson and figured this was the same thing. He tried to push past his discomfort, expecting Silena to beat him easily on the second fight.
She didn’t. Nor did any of the other partners they put him with. Percy knew how to use these weapons and holding them made his heart race in a way he hadn’t felt since he fought Ares. They brought back memories of pain, of a threat to his life, of—
He had no idea what was going on.
Chiron seemed to notice his discomfort but misconstrued the reason for it. “It’s common for children of Poseidon to naturally take to the trident,” he reassured him. “This is not unusual. And your skill with the sword shows that you are simply good with weapons.”
Percy didn’t like connecting this feeling to Riptide, so he pushed that away. He finished the lesson, but when Chiron asked him later if he wanted to train more with a trident, one-on-one, he declined. These feelings were stupid. Powerful, petty, and pointless—but he still never wanted to pick up a trident again.
He participated in the required lessons on how to fight tridents, but no more than any other camper. And if he had nightmares those nights of things he could never remember when he woke up, he told nobody.
The nightmares got worse during his time on the Argo II, but at that point, it was hard to distinguish them from his other nightmares—about drowning, about losing all his memories, about never being good enough. And after they got out of Tartarus, there was no real hope for him to distinguish between different terrors. They blurred together. One moment he was staring up at Gabe, a young boy about to be struck; then there was Tartarus himself, dragging all light and sound into him, and Percy was dropping his sword; and then there was a middle-aged man looming over him with a saccharine smile, his beard wrapped around his neck like a chinstrap.
Percy woke to the grinding of Tartarus’s voice, overlaid with light, nasal laughter. They couldn’t be more different, and yet they were exactly the same.
He couldn’t explain his nightmares to anyone, even when he and Annabeth tried to be open with each other about what made them wake the other, screaming. The gorgon blood had restored his memories, but he didn’t have them until he tried to access them. Hera had emptied all the files in his mind, and now they were back, but whoever had returned them had left them a mess, all mixed up. It wasn’t until he went looking that he found what he needed. Now that he had found them, they were clearer than ever—wow, could he really remember exactly what Annabeth had said to him in the Tunnel of Love all those years ago?—but it had taken some organising. And Percy wasn’t very organised.
But he’d tried. When they’d been racing in the chariot to save Camp Jupiter, Percy had sorted through all his memories. He’d thought he had, at least. His childhood with his mom and Gabe; the years at camp; his family and friends; the war with Kronos… As far as he’d been able to tell, all the weird flashbacks and triggers were accounted for. But there were still loose papers floating about. It took him a few months to pin them down.
He kept his nose clean. He went back to school. When Zeus decided to make his life difficult, he did the stupid letter quests. It was after he’d returned Ganymede’s chalice that he finally managed to pin one of his new memories down. The phone call his dad gave him, where he said he was proud of Percy’s decision to fight Geras had filled him with a warmth that lasted even when he slipped into his seat in class immediately after. Talking to his dad usually gave him that warmth. In fact, he mused, that was his earliest memory of Poseidon, wasn’t it? A warm glow and the trace of a smile.
Except when he cast his mind back, searching for the memory like someone might look for the photocopy of a photocopy of their birth certificate, he remembered his dad’s whole face. Percy had been small, frail, and Poseidon had lifted him into his arms.
His arms had been strong. Safe. Percy had been shaking, cold with terror, and he had never felt so small and helpless. He’d been crying, he remembered. That was weird. Percy hadn’t cried as a child. Not since Gabe had come into the picture.
“You’re safe, Percy,” Poseidon had soothed, holding him tightly. “I’m taking you home to your mother. It’s alright.” He hesitated, then—because Percy was still pushing at his chest, shaking—he admitted: “I’m your father.”
Percy had paused. “Daddy?”
“Yes.”
The warmth around them had strengthened with the claim and the connection. Percy had finally relaxed enough to let his exhaustion outweigh his terror. He’d fallen asleep in his dad’s arms while Poseidon smiled comfortingly down on him.
Percy sat straight up, knocking the desk with his knee. His teacher paused what she was saying. “Mr Jackson? Did you have something to add?”
“No,” he added hurriedly. She probably thought he’d nearly fallen asleep, because she just glared then moved on. Percy didn’t care. He couldn’t focus on mitosis or whatever she was talking about.
What the hell had that memory been?
He fought to keep his breathing calm, but apparently he wasn’t doing well. His classmates were giving him side eyes. Any minute, someone was gonna call Paul. It wouldn’t be the first time Percy had reacted poorly in class and his stepdad had been summoned to deal with him, but for once, this wasn’t anything to do with the hell that had been the last year of his life.
He tried to remember anything else, and as he looked, it came to him: the busy Manhattan streets, the fact that Poseidon walked with Percy on his hip instead of teleporting them somewhere; the heat and stench of summer in the city. His dad had smelled like the sea, of course. Percy had been in pain. He couldn’t remember where it had hurt, because he’d been too young to really process that much of it, but it had felt like it was everywhere. His two middle fingers had felt strangely light. Like a weight had been pulled off them.
What had happened before that? Why had his dad appeared?
But apparently those questions were too vague for the filing system in his brain. The secretary in charge told him to come back later.
He couldn’t focus on school. Well, he rarely could, but now he had something else to focus on. As soon as the bell rang, he ran home. It was his turn to cook dinner, and he got out some nervous energy by chopping onions with all the pizzazz he could muster. Paul was gonna be out late tonight, so he had his mom to himself to interrogate. Or… ask nicely.
His resolve to ask nicely went out the window as soon as she hung up her coat. He blurted, “When did I first meet Dad?”
Sally paused. The smile that had been on her face when she smelled dinner cooking froze, one hand over her baby bump. That sent another shock of guilt through him. He couldn’t ambush a pregnant woman like that!
“First meet him?” Sally clarified. Percy nodded.
“Did he, like, visit me as a child? Before I found out who he was and everything.”
“Visiting would’ve put you in danger, sweetheart.” But she looked awkward, now. He narrowed his eyes.
“I remember him,” Percy said. “It’s part of the gorgon blood bringing back my memories, I think. All my memories are stronger than they were before. I remember him picking me up and saying he was taking me home.” Sally winced. “What happened?”
“I should’ve told you sooner,” she admitted. “There was no real reason to keep it a secret once you knew you were a demigod. But it scared me.”
Percy put dinner in the oven to cook and went to sit at the counter. “What scared you?” The urgency had bled out of him at the look on his mom’s face. Instead, he felt dread. “What happened?”
“I don’t know the whole story,” Sally said. She went to sit opposite the counter. “Nor did Poseidon, I think. But you’d been kidnapped.”
Behind him, the kitchen tap turned on. Percy winced and turned it off again without look. At least he hadn’t blown up the plumbing.
“Kidnapped?” he said, smiling calmly, tapping his fingers very calmly, and all around being the poster boy for calmness.
“I don’t know how it happened. Someone came to pick you up from school who wasn’t me. You were in first grade, and you told them you didn’t know this person, but none of the teachers cared. We suspected that they’d used the Mist to convince them. By the time I arrived to pick you up, you’d been gone for over an hour.” She swallowed. “You were missing for four months.”
Percy’s heart thudded in his chest. “How come I don’t remember this?”
She smiled thinly. “I prayed to your father,” she said in lieu of answering him. “It took him a while to track you down. I think he had every Cyclops in America on the lookout for you. But there was only so much he could do without the other Olympians hearing that Poseidon was obsessed with tracking down a little human boy. Eventually, one of them spotted you. It was in a random alleyway on the other side of Manhattan. You were with a large blond man who kept growling things at you while you fought a hellhound behind some dumpsters.”
“A hellhound? I was what, six, and I was fighting hellhounds?”
“The Cyclops sent a message to Poseidon and tried to grab you, but the man who was with you just laughed and killed him before he could. From there, we narrowed down the search area. Maybe your captors didn’t realise that the Cyclops was someone looking for you, not a random monster there to eat a demigod child. We’d already suspected the kidnapping was to do with the mythical world; this confirmed it. Finally, you were spotted again a week later, fighting some crab-like monsters while the blond man looked on. More Cyclopes converged and killed the man, and your dad came to fetch you. You were injured from the fight and were screaming too loudly for the Mist to disguise the Cyclopes.”
“Where was I? Why did the guy have me fighting monsters? Was it meant to be a training exercise?”
Sally wiped her eyes with her thumb then clasped her hands on the counter in front of her. “I don’t know. We never figured out who’d taken you or why. We tried to ask you, but you just talked about a beast. A tower. Other kids. Whoever they were, they’d told you that you were a demigod and trained you with weapons. When your father told you who he was, you asked if he was really Poseidon.” She paused. “Well, that’s not true. You asked if he was really Neptune.”
He sucked in a breath. Sally smiled a little. “Yeah. It gave me a shock when you got back from Greece and told me you’d been running around in California calling yourself a son of Neptune. I didn’t know what it meant at the time, just thought it was another name for Poseidon. He didn’t suggest anything different. I still don’t know what to make of it.”
Neither did Percy. When she’d talked at first, he’d wondered if it was maybe one of Kronos’s men, trying to grab and train the prophecy child before he could be taught to worship the gods. But Kronos wouldn’t have called his son Neptune.
“Your father took the memories away,” she finished. “If you knew you were a demigod, you’d attract monsters more quickly. I’d have to send you straight to camp. But even then, he suspected that your kidnappers must have tracked you down using your demigod scent. He warned me that it might be too late.”
Percy could put the rest together. If this had happened when he was six, he remembered whose wedding he’d been to when he was seven. “So, you found and married Gabe.”
She just nodded.
Percy stared at the counter for a long while. A few minutes later, the timing on the oven went off, so he stood up to get dinner.
“Well, I guess if Hera can take memories, so can Dad,” he said just to break the silence. He kept his back turned to her, though. “But we still don’t know who took me? Just that they were in New York somewhere. Probably Manhattan. They were probably mythological. And they taught me how to fight with a sword against random monsters in alleyways?”
“Not a sword.”
Percy glanced over his shoulder. “What?”
“That was another creepy detail. They didn’t teach you how to use a sword. They gave you a net and a trident.”
Like a retiarius.
Percy’s stomach swooped and dived.
“Why didn’t you tell me about any of this sooner?” he asked quietly.
Sally looked pained. “You were under so much pressure from the Olympian gods. Clearly the kidnapping wasn’t anything to do with them, so I thought… I thought maybe they wouldn’t draw attention to themselves by going after a high-profile target like you, once your existence was known. Then there was the Giant War and the Romans, but I didn’t have the chance to tell you about it before you were gone. And since you got back…” She swallowed. “You’ve been struggling, baby. There’s always something else for you to fight. If it hasn’t been an issue in ten years, I didn’t want to scare you by talking about another colossus that might be waiting in the wings.”
“There’s always something else,” he echoed dully.
“Yeah.”
And what could he say to that?
She was right.
Percy tried to figure out, in his spare time, who his former kidnapper could have been. Talking to the Romans didn’t help, even before the communications went down. Annabeth set her brilliant mind to the task, but she couldn’t come up with any promising leads either. The number of beings in New York who wanted to kill a demigod child? High. The number of beings in New York who wanted to kidnap and train one? Not so high. But if they were out there, they didn’t advertise what they did.
It didn’t matter. He tried to tell himself that it didn’t matter. He had the DSTOMP to focus on. High school. Not flunking out of the plans he and Annabeth had made for their future. Maybe once he got to New Rome someone else would have a better idea of why Percy had heard his father called Neptune before he ever heard him called Poseidon.
Then Lester Papadopoulos appeared at his door.
Apollo wasn’t important, as much as that would have aggrieved him to hear. Percy took him in and teased him with his Icarus shirt and ribbed him for having written the sections of the DSTOMP he found most difficult. But he wouldn’t have lifted a finger to help a former god if he hadn’t had a demigod child with him. Percy agreed to take her to camp.
It took him until during lunch, when Meg was digging into the seven-layer dip with a gusto that he could tell concerned his mom, to notice Meg’s rings.
“Where did you get those?” Percy asked, interrupted the loud, smacking noises she made as she ate.
Meg looked at him like Harley did when Percy caught him trying to melt down random weapons from the armoury for his Celestial bronze projects. “Where did I get what?”
“Your rings.” He nodded at them. “They’re… pretty.”
“Found them.”
“You found them?”
Meg set her mouth in a mulish pout. Thankfully, Apollo took that moment to comment: “Are they crescent moons? I thought so! They remind me of my sister’s symbols.”
“They’re not moons,” Meg said.
Apollo frowned. “But if you found them—”
“Where did you find them?” Percy asked.
“Dumpster.”
Apollo was nodding like this made sense. And it did. That was where he said he’d found Meg. In an alleyway… in Manhattan…
Percy looked back at the rings and remembered what his rings had looked like.
The memory he’d been trying to find for months finally slid out from between the filing cabinet and the wall. He’d been with his trainer, trying to find another monster to fight. He’d dropped his rings when the Cyclopes had attacked, and they’d fallen into a dumpster. But they weren’t the same rings that Meg would someday supposedly find in a dumpster, because his hadn’t had crescents on them. The one on his left hand had had a square pattern all around it, like a spreadsheet—or a net. And the one on his right hand had had a trident symbol.
“What weapons are they?” he asked. He was surprised by how calm his voice was. Maybe dealing with so many kids at camp really was paying off.
Apollo stared at him. “Weapons? I just said they were moons!”
“Sickles, I bet,” Percy continued. “Right? Symbol of Demeter.” He wondered if Meg would correct him and say Ceres.
Sally was looking between them all like it was a three-way tennis match.
Meg ducked her head, a flush creeping up her cheeks. “They’re mine,” she said.
“They’re cool,” Percy insisted. “Can you show me? I bet you know how to use them as well.”
Apparently, getting that much attention from a fellow demigod was enough to override Meg’s shyness, because she showed off her twin sickles then struck a pose. A fighting stance, that was, not one for the paparazzi.
“You’re a dimachaerus,” Apollo noted. “One of the traditional Roman gladiators. That’s the hardest style to master. And the deadliest to fight against.”
Another gladiator style. Percy glanced at his mom, who finally seemed to realise what he was getting at, but he looked back at Meg before she could pick up on it. She seemed to have already. She was so tense, it was like she expected him to blow up at her.
Percy let out an appreciative breath to help her relax. “That’s really cool,” he said. Maybe if he said enough words that twelve-year-olds liked, he could disguise the fact that he was freaking out. “Hey, I can take you to camp now, then I’ll visit at the weekend. Wanna be on my Capture the Flag team when I do? I could use a dima— whatever he just said. The Ares cabin have beaten my team three games running, and I’m not letting that stand.”
She giggled. “Sure.”
He drove them to Camp Half-Blood. He’d hoped to talk to Chiron about her rings, about where she might have come from, about the memories stacked in the dusty corners of his mind. But then he had a head cold, there was a vicious peach spirit Meg called a friend, and the cops were going after Paul’s car for Percy’s reckless driving.
Later, he promised Apollo. He’d come back at the weekend.
He came back too late. Meg was already gone by the time Mrs O’Leary dropped Percy right on top of the statue’s head. And Percy was getting flashbacks to Bianca’s death.
Apollo had a plan, so Percy distracted the statue as asked. Mrs O’Leary ran to the beach to chase after the spike Percy had sliced off the statue’s crown. Percy himself leapt off the statue’s head, slid down its body to the bottom, and ran in front of it waving his arms like a madman. “Hey, Bronze Butt! Come get me!”
It felt good to be the one going after the giant bronze statue for once. Percy knew why Apollo didn’t want the statue stomping the hearth, and if he had to crawl inside it this time, he would. But as soon as he looked up at the colossus, his bravado died in his chest.
As he’d hoped, its attention was fixed on him. It tilted its whole face down to study him like a bug on the ground. It looked like Apollo, sure—and Percy would be asking why later—but it was also familiar in a way that made Percy feel like a kid again. A kid waiting for the other shoe to drop. The fist to clench. The shouting to start.
The statue had a neckbeard. It smiled faintly, like it was amused at some inane, pathetic piece of defiance a prisoner had tried to throw in its face.
Percy’s memories came flooding back. The man—the emperor, he’d called himself—had been nice to him. He’d promised Percy could see his mother soon, if he was good. If he did what he was told. If he just stopped being so difficult. When Percy had duelled with the retiarius trainer, he’d looked on with a smug smile and praised him for being a quick learner. But when Percy had refused to eat, refused to sleep, refused to train or kneel in his throne room…
He’d called it waking the Beast.
Now, Percy knew that was a manipulation tactic. He’d punished him, ordering others to beat him and sending him to fight against other kids, against monsters, against adult servants who cringed away from his trident.
But even if he knew that now, the muscles in his body remembered how he had felt. And they flinched away from the statue all the same.
There’s always something else, he cursed himself. Another trauma to work through. Something else to realise. Another reason to fight and suffer. Despite his mom’s optimistic naming intentions, Percy was starting to wonder if any happy ending existed, anywhere.
He did what Apollo had asked him to do, but he also did what he had always done, when faced with a colossus too large for him to fight alone. He ran. And once Apollo had made it sneeze its head off—hey, if it worked, it worked—he took the statue to Atlantis.
He needed to talk to his dad.
“Nero,” Percy said, while Poseidon stared at the team of mermen still trying to unhitch the hippocampi from the statue. They were being very patient about it, not huffing or snarling at anyone, even though the ropes had to be chafing by now. Percy loved hippocampi.
Poseidon thinned his lips. “Apollo is sure that he is the villain? He died thousands of years ago.”
Percy had rushed back to camp after giving the hippocampi directions so he could reunite with Leo and Calypso and get the debriefing. Then he’d raced right back here for this very serious conversation. And he was not feeling as patient as the hippocampi. “He’s sure. Apparently the dude tried to burn a grove in the woods down. And I’m sure. I remember him.”
That got his dad’s attention. The bank of coral they were floating above suddenly got much quieter, as the chattering fish on the reef shut up to listen. Poseidon noticed that too.
“My men will take the Colossus Neronis to my architectural team and see if they can get any use out of it,” he said. “Come into the palace.”
Percy hesitated. He’d been to the outskirts of Atlantis to speak to his dad before, but he hadn’t been back to the palace itself since after Beckendorf had died. He doubted his divine stepmother and half-brother were any more eager to see him now than they had been then.
But his dad had invited him. And Percy wanted a relationship with his dad too much to reject that sort of thing.
He followed until they were in what looked to be a private study. Percy spent more time studying the abalone decorations than he did his dad’s frown. When Poseidon got tired of him avoiding his gaze, he sighed.
“What do you mean you remember him?”
“From when I was kidnapped.” The words came out cold. Chill. Like he hadn’t been thinking about this for weeks. “Turns out it wasn’t just Hera who took my memories. Gorgon blood healed what you took as well.”
“I see.” When Percy looked up at him, his dad just looked worried. “How much do you remember?”
Percy let himself smile softly. “The first thing I remembered was your face. I always had this memory of you, like this warm glow, but then I was thinking about it and I realised I remembered your face. You were holding me. And I went wait. When did this happen?”
Poseidon smiled back, something in his shoulders easing, but he didn’t interrupt.
“Everything else I remember is in bits and pieces. I can’t just remember.” He waved his hands around, trying to find a way to articulate it. “The memories are there when I reach for them, but I have to know where to look. I’ve been trying to remember for weeks, but I only broke through when Apollo and Meg showed up at my door.”
“Why is Apollo bothering you? I thought you just ran into him at Camp Half-Blood. He should not be demanding your assistance on quests.”
Percy snorted. “Do you really need me to answer that?”
Poseidon sighed. “I suppose I do not. How did he jog your memory?”
“Meg was raised there. With Nero. By Nero. She’s a demigod daughter of Demeter,” he clarified, “and I remember Nero had twelve demigods in his service. I think he wanted one for each of the twelve Olympians, though obviously some spots couldn’t be filled by direct children. I remember when he saw me, he was excited to find out he could fill the Neptune spot.”
His dad raised a hand to his temple. “Please… do not mention my Roman counterpart. We do not get along.”
Percy paused, staring. “Wait, really? Why not? I get there’s pain when you two fight, but how different are you?”
“He reminds me of Zeus,” Poseidon grumbled.
Huh. There was a lot to unpack there.
“Anyway,” Percy said. “She didn’t tell me any of this. Obviously. She’s a scared kid. I think Nero sent her to claim Apollo’s service and sabotage his trials. But I recognised her rings. They were Imperial gold and turned into sickles that she could fight with.” He made swooshing motions with his arms to illustrate the point. “I remembered having rings like those. A trident and a net.”
“You hate using tridents,” Poseidon observed.
Percy winced. “Sorry to disappoint, Dad.”
“You could never disappoint me, Percy.” Poseidon’s smile was tired but genuine; Percy tried not to flush.
“It made me remember,” he continued. “The tower. The training. They used to take me around Manhattan to attract monsters so I could kill them for training. If you hadn’t rescued me, I don’t know who I’d be now.”
“You’d still be my son.”
“I figured it out too late for Meg. By the time I got to camp at the weekend, Apollo had already had his confrontation with Nero, and she’d run away. He was an abusive stepfather. He sucked. But she still felt so loyal to him, but didn’t want to betray Apollo, and it was tearing her apart. All I could do was help take down the Colossus Neronis before it destroyed camp.” He waved vaguely in the direction of where the statue was.
His dad was watching him way too closely for comfort. “It upsets you that this was what drove your mother to marry that man.”
Percy flinched. Maybe he shouldn’t have said abusive stepfather. That’d probably given the game away. “I was more trouble than I was worth.”
“That is not true.” Poseidon sounded angry, and the part of Percy that was still raw from standing under the statue’s cold gaze cringed away. His dad softened his tone. “Sally agrees with me. She had already noticed that man at his place of work, when you were kidnapped. She was already considering marrying him; your kidnapping was simply the inciting factor. You were always going to attract monsters, Percy.”
Percy said nothing. What else was there?
“There’s always something else,” he said again. “Another monster. Another colossus looming over me, ready to squash me like a bug. Why…” He stopped himself before he could ask why weren’t you there?
He knew why he hadn’t been there. Poseidon had made the decisions he’d thought had been in Percy’s best interests, just as Sally had. It was up to Percy to figure out what to do with the consequences of escaping the frying pan of Nero’s tutelage only to be thrown into Gabe’s fire.
“You are older now,” Poseidon offered. “You are the greatest demigod of your generation. You can protect yourself and your friends. And I think you will find that these colossuses no longer look as impressive as they once did.”
“I was small then,” he snapped back.
His dad let him calm himself down, his eyes never leaving Percy’s face.
“Nero is not your burden to bear,” Poseidon said at last. “I am sorry. I didn’t realise you would still carry the fear of him even after I took your memories. But this is Apollo’s quest. If it weren’t, I would strike Nero down myself for what he has done to you. Rest assured that Apollo will complete his trials and return to godhood. He may not have impressed you much over the years, but I remember when he was mortal before. He is more resilient than he thinks.”
Percy snorted. Poseidon sounded fond, which wasn’t an emotion Percy heard much from one Olympian to another. “Yeah, he told me about your stint in Troy.”
“Do not remind me.” Poseidon rolled his eyes, but he took it with good humour. “From what you have told me, Apollo will be good for this young girl. And she will be good for him. Let him handle the fight against Nero. You have fought enough already. You were wise to reject him in the first place. Focus on your schoolwork.”
Percy sighed. “Nero’s gonna be another world-ending threat, isn’t he? Someone who wants to take over.”
“That does not mean it is your concern.”
“I can’t just sit back and let Lester Papadopoulos put his life on the line to deal with this guy. I remember Nero. I remember how—” He couldn’t find the right word. Brutal? Horrible? Insane? “I remember how he is.”
“Your mother dealt with your stepfather eventually. You allowed her to do that.”
That took the wind out of Percy’s sails. He sagged back. “Yeah. I did.”
“There is always something else to fight,” Poseidon reiterated back at him. “But that doesn’t mean it has to be you. Your mother protected you where she could. Your friends will deal with this for you. Put down your sword, Percy.”
Percy took a deep breath. He nodded. And then, to his horror, he started to cry.
Poseidon was in front of him in an instant. He was large enough in his mer form to pick Percy up and cradle him to his chest, like he had when Percy was small. His warm glow enveloped them both. He still smelled like the sea.
“Thanks, Dad,” he choked out, holding onto his tightly. “For saving me then. Even if you couldn’t save me later.”
His dad didn’t seem to know what to do with that. He just held Percy tighter. After a few minutes, he asked, “Would it make you feel better to watch me smite that statue?”
Percy laughed.
“Actually,” he said. “I think it would.”
Percy graduated high school. Annabeth wanted to drive to New Rome early, so they had plenty of time to get there and settle in before the college semester started, but he hung around. When his mom questioned him, he had to admit that he was waiting for Apollo to come back.
Thankfully, Apollo didn’t disappoint. One day, when Paul was making lasagna and Percy was bouncing Estelle on his knee, Apollo and Meg showed up with a Gaul in tow.
They exchanged niceties. Sally and Paul both took it in stride, as they always did. But Percy grinned at the three questers with a little more bloodlust than he usually had.
“You’re going to the tower to take down Nero?” he asked.
The Gaul—Lu—looked at him disdainfully. With Estelle in his lap, he probably didn’t look much like a warrior. “What do you know of the Tower of Nero?”
“He tried to be my stepfather once too,” Percy said cheerily, ignoring the way Paul frowned and Apollo gasped. “Meg, I assume you have siblings we need to rescue?”
She still looked stunned. “Uh. Yeah. There are others in the household. Yeah.”
“It’s my job to take down the emperors and Python,” Apollo insisted. “I can’t let you risk yourself.”
Wow. Percy blinked. Was that respect he felt? Did Percy feel respect for Apollo? That was new. He let himself smile.
“You can deal with Nero,” Percy said. “I’m here for the kids. It’s your quest, man. You decide the plan and all that. But I can provide rescue backup if you want it.”
“I will,” Apollo said. He clarified—“I will deal with Nero.” He was giving Percy a funny look after his confession, glancing between Sally, Paul, and him like he was trying to unravel something. Percy found he didn’t mind. “For… everyone.”
Lester was not a large human being, but Percy thought that even in his twenty-foot form, Apollo had never seemed so tall. “I believe in you,” he said.
He was surprised to find that he meant it.