Archive of Our Own

Jason comes into the world squalling and screaming to an absent mother and a father who never cared. 

The nurses marvel at the strength in his grip, the brightness in his unusually blue eyes, the perfect glow to his skin. They’re not to know it, of course, but it’s the ichor coursing through his veins, his birthright and his curse, given to him by a god who wasn’t supposed to have children in the first place.

Jason isn’t to know it either, but somewhere, somehow, a clock begins to tick.

oO0Oo

Thalia stares at the small bundle of purple cloth and the tiny being inside. 

The baby is a squishy, red-faced lump with a shock of white-blond hair and a grumpy expression, and he’s easily the ugliest thing she’s ever seen. 

She falls in love instantly. 

“We should name him Alex,” she says and reaches into the bassinet, letting her new brother wrap his tiny fist around her finger with surprising strength. “Like, short for Alexander.”

She’s speaking to her mother but doesn’t move her eyes from the baby. 

Alexander. Defender of men. The name of one of history’s most powerful and accomplished generals. The name of kings and heroes. 

Thalia stares into those too-blue eyes and knows. Her brother will need a good, strong name in face of all that the Fates have woven for him. A name with courage and determination written into its legacy. 

Yes, Alexander is a good name for a son of Zeus. 

oO0Oo 

Nine days later, Zeus shows up at their door with a blue balloon and a strange golden amulet, and declares that her new brother is to be named Jason, not Alexander, by order of her divine step-mother.

Thalia fumes for the rest of the day and the thunderstorm outside echoes her rage.

oO0Oo

When Jason is two, Beryl Grace takes him and Thalia on a trip to the Sonoma Valley in California. He doesn’t know the specifics of it, of course – he is only two. But he plays I Spy with Thalia in the car, watching the landscape shift around him with stunning beauty, and chews on the front leg of his Sophie the Giraffe toy.

His mother stops the car and Thalia is quick to jump out and run around the other side to unbuckle him from his carseat. She lifts him out and sets him down with an overexaggerated Hrrumph sound that sets him giggling uncontrollably. 

“Again!” he claps his hands together.

Thalia bends down to press a kiss to his forehead. “Maybe later, kiddo. Let’s see what mom has in store for us.”

One hand clasped in Thalia’s, Jason toddles up the crest of a small hill and sits down amidst the new spring flowers sprouting out of the damp earth. He picks one, a little white weed with a yellow centre, and offers it to Thalia. Her expression softens and she stops eyeing their mother suspiciously just long enough to take it and tuck it behind her ear.

“Thalia.” His mother’s voice is sharp in a way that makes him shrink back. He wants to hide behind Thalia, like he always does when their mother gets like this. Thalia says their mother is crazy and sick, but Jason just thinks she looks scary. “Go get the picnic basket from the car.”

Thalia’s face splits into a snarl. “I’m not leaving him alone with you.”

“Thalia! Go get the picnic basket.” His mother’s voice holds a warning, a promise of punishment if Thalia didn’t obey.

Thalia snarls out a bad word, one she said he was never allowed to repeat, and turns to stomp down the hill.

“Bye bye!” Jason waves at the retreating figure of his big sister. When she’s out of sight, he turns to his mother. “Thalia bring juice?”

“No, baby,” his mother sniffs and her face gets all red and splotchy, like it does when she yells about Jason’s dad being a deadbeat no good piece of shit who fucks off leaving me to deal with his bastard mistakes. Jason doesn’t know what that means, but when he’d asked Thalia once, she’d gone very quiet and left the room, but Jason still heard her yell at mom later, calling her all sorts of mean names. “You won’t see Thalia again.”

He wrinkles his nose. Thalia had always been there for him – helping him take his first steps and tucking him into bed at night and even making SpaghettiOs when he didn’t like the things mom ordered for dinner. Imagining life without her was impossible.

“Thalia come back?” he asks, a little more uncertain this time. 

His mother wipes tears from her eyes, smearing black makeup across her face. It makes her look scary, like she did when she came home with her breath smelling funny and sour, yelling at them and breaking his toys. She carries him down the other side of the hill, to a place where an old mansion lays in ruins. “You’re going somewhere else, baby. Somewhere you belong. I—” she sobs. “I tried to keep you with me, but Hera was adamant that you have to be separated from Thalia.”

Jason looks around uncertainly, clutching Sophie the Giraffe to his chest. “Where Thalia going?”

“Nowhere, baby,” his mother says, and sets him on the cracked stone steps. “Hera said the wolves will come and guide you from here.”

Suddenly, something growls, low and deep, in the underbrush. Jason hesitates and glances around. He can’t see anything, but he gets the undeniable feeling that he’s being watched, and he doesn’t think it's like when Scooby Doo was on the television and he couldn’t sleep because he thought the ghosts were in his room. No, this feels very real and very, very dangerous.

“Mommy?” his voice quivers. 

His mother bursts into heaving sobs, cries that make her whole body shudder. She’s babbling apologies and pleas for forgiveness and mercy. Jason whimpers at the sight and takes a step back. This was the scary mom, the one that yelled all the time and cried because of his dad, who always made Jason sad.

Then, out of the woods, he sees them come. Five wolves, varied in colour from pure white to dappled grey, emerge from the shadows. Their leader is the biggest animal Jason has ever seen – even bigger than Mr. Halsen’s doberman next door. A wolf with chocolate red fur and piercing silver eyes walks towards him and seems to grow in stature until she is standing beside his mother, looking down at the woman weeping on the ground. 

The wolf growls low in the back of her throat.

“No!” Jason takes another step back. “Nuh uh. Stranger danger!” Just like Thalia told him. He hopes she’ll be proud that he remembered never to go anywhere with anyone he didn’t know, even if they promised candy. And these wolves do not have candy.

The wolf makes a low whimpering noise followed by a sharp bark and the twitching of her ears. In one swift move, she has closed the space between them and has Jason picked up by his collar. He swings there, the back of his Sesame Street shirt held gently but firmly in the wolf’s jaws, and screams in fright.

“Thalia! Thalia!”

But for the first time in his life, Thalia doesn’t come. 

His mother sobs again and reaches for him, but one of the other wolves gives a warning growl and she backs off quickly, face pale and slack in shock.

“Mommy!” Jason cries. “Mommy, please!”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. Her voice is so quiet Jason can hardly hear her above his own crying. “I’m so sorry, baby.”

“I want Thalia!”

“You can’t have her!” his mother snaps suddenly, face melting into a scowl. “Hera decreed it to be so!”

“Thalia!”

The wolves turn and walk back into the underbrush, Jason still swinging by the collar in the jaws of the largest wolf.

He keeps crying for his sister. 

She never comes.

oO0Oo

Jason’s third birthday passes without fanfare. He isn’t even aware that he’s a whole year older. He’s mostly forgotten about the day he came to them and has long since gotten past his fear. 

Instead of cake and presents, he spends his day wrestling with the pups and toddling after the pack when they go hunting.

But Lupa knows. She’s raised this boy as part of her litter for months now, she’s been watching and knows the son of Jupiter is growing. He’s already of age to be a full citizen of Rome, and has survived both his naming ceremony and what training she could give him. Soon, he will be strong enough to wield a sword and defend the might of Rome.

Two months later, she accompanies him to the entrance of Camp Jupiter. 

From there on, the whelp is on his own.

oO0Oo

The journey to Camp is long and fraught with danger. 

Never has one so young survived Lupa’s training, but Jason Grace is still merely a boy. For all his strength and intelligence, he’s only a pup. He can’t wield a sword or a spear yet and carries no weapons save his teeth and tiny fingernails. 

Jason clings to the scruff of Lupa’s fur, legs clenched tightly around the wolf’s chest as she carries him south to the place where he belongs. Most demigods do not get an escort to the legion’s entrance, but the young son of Jupiter is an exception.

Lupa chuffs quietly and flicks her ears, listening to the sounds of the underbrush and scanning the darkness for signs of the monsters that will try to harm the pup. It is not their way, protecting a child of Rome from his own destiny – no, their way has always been to conquer or die. But Jason’s tiny hand curls into the mass of fur at her neck, his body so fragile upon her back, and she decides that his inevitable death can be prolonged slightly.

Jason lets out an almost silent sigh and nuzzles deeper into the warmth of Lupa’s body, his chest rising and falling in tandem with hers, and he sleeps, oblivious to the way the wolf looks to the stars and heavens above and wonders, albeit briefly, if the gods are looking back.

oO0Oo

Jason is three years, two months, and eighteen days old when he lays eyes on Camp Jupiter for the first time.

It’s the sounds of the highway that wake him first. After months living in the woods with only the noises of the forest creatures and the winds in the trees, the screech of tires and harsh blasts of horns sends him into tears. 

Lupa looks sharply back at him and makes a low rumbling noise in the back of her throat. He quiets almost immediately, reading the reprimand in her body language, and lets his tears fade into silent hiccups that shake his whole body.

He tightens his grip on her fur as she suddenly plunges down the hillside and dashes through a large gap in the chain link fence separating the hills from the highway. He wants to scream, to start crying again, but Lupa had drilled such reactions out of him. His earlier bout of tears had been a moment of weakness frowned upon by the wolf pack and he would not let himself do that again, even if the way Lupa wove between cars and narrowly avoided throwing Jason off her back was really scary.

He doesn’t realized he’s whimpering and blinking back more hot tears despite his best efforts until Lupa steps onto the cement platform in front of a guarded door. The wolf turns back and twitches her ears in disappointment. He sniffs and wipes his runny nose with the back of his hand.

Two big kids in purple shirts step forward. They’re wearing gold armour like the dummies Jason practiced on at the Wolf House, but this armour seems shiny and new, not covered in deep scratches from lots of other demigods training or yearling wolves who use them as chew toys. Both have long pointy sticks with gold tips and one has a golden sword strapped to his belt.

“Lupa.” One of the big kids, a boy on the cusp of manhood with hazel eyes and wavy brown hair peeking out from below the edges of his helmet, goes briefly to one knee in deference. The other boy, younger but no less huge from Jason’s perspective, stays at attention, the spear held in both hands, brown eyes scanning the highway and the forest beyond for any threats, for any reason why the She-Wolf should have come bounding up to the Caldecott Tunnel in such a rush.

Then the hazel-eyed boy notices Jason half-buried in Lupa’s fur and stands to take another step forward. He extends his free hand, the one with a crossed hammer and spear mark on his inner wrist and three lines below it, to pull him off the wolf’s back and Jason reacts instinctively.

Like Lupa had drilled into him over so many months, he pushes up so he’s no longer lying down on her back and snarls, lip curling over his upper teeth in an unmistakable threat.

The boy backs away quickly. He looks in bewilderment at the child their goddess has personally escorted to their Camp – not even a child, really, still a toddler by all his estimates – and then exchanges a glance with his partner on duty.

“I think it might be best if you escort him in,” he says slowly, his attention back on the wolf. 

Lupa twitches her ears in acquiescence and releases a low growl in the back of her throat that has Jason settling back down on her back. She’s told him there’s no danger, that he’s among allies, but still he watches the hazel-eyed boy suspiciously as he opens the tunnel door and follows them into the darkness.

oO0Oo

Though the river is not deep, Jason’s pants and bare feet still get soaked as the current rushes over them. He’d been forced to discard his shoes months ago when they’d gotten too small and ripped. He’s gotten used to running around barefoot, but still, the sensation of freezing water lapping at his legs makes him uncomfortable. 

It’s not the cold; he’s been taught to withstand that, even at his young age.

No, it’s the churning in his gut that tells him he’s in danger, that the water is no friend of his. That there’s a fundamental part of him that is being rejected, telling him that the river is not where he belongs. Something tells him he’s a creature of the air; he does not belong beneath the waves.

But then Lupa is on the opposite bank and the feeling passes.

A small crowd has gathered at the edge of the river, several of the kids fiddling with weapons strapped to their sides or held in their hands. Jason watches with slight curiosity as one of the group breaks away and sprints towards a collection of buildings in the distance.

Lupa stops in front of the cluster of people, all way older than Jason – most even older than Thalia, who was the oldest person ever except for his mom. He slides off her back and tumbles gently to the ground, dirt clinging to his wet skin. Lupa shakes all over to dry herself and Jason does the same, shuddering his whole body and tossing his hair out of his eyes.

A few of the kids laugh quietly at that but soon stop when Jason turns, still on hands and knees, and snarls at them, eyes narrowed in challenge.

The runner from before returns, an older girl in a purple shirt and several others draped in white bed sheets behind her. Jason cocks his head as he watches the way the girl’s hand falls slack from the hilt of the sword at her side when she notices him. 

“Praetor Hilde Ljungborg-Smith,” she introduces herself, slowly turning to Lupa but keeping an eye on Jason. He wrinkles his nose at the unfamiliar term that resonates in his bones nonetheless. “What’s going on?”

The hazel-eyed boy from before steps forward and gives a brief explanation of the situation then turns to Lupa. 

“—Then Lupa brought the boy here,” he finishes.

Everyone’s eyes are riveted on Jason. He sits back on his haunches and does his best impression of Lupa’s low warning rumble.

“How long has he been with you, Lupa?” Hilde says crouching down to study Jason more clearly, but she keeps several feet of distance between them. “He’s just a kid.”

Jason watches Lupa communicate with the big kids in front of him, not speaking but using the language of wolves that was all Jason had known for months.

He is Juno’s Champion, abandoned six months ago at my den by his mother. She ruffles her ears and Jason wrinkles his nose in answer. He has completed his training and seeks to join the legion.

Though the crowd had been quiet before, now the silence was deafening. 

“He’s just a kid,” Hilde repeats uncertainly. “Surely, Lupa, he can’t be expected to—”

He is a Child of Rome and I have deemed him worthy.

“Still…” Hilde stands and looks down into Lupa’s silver eyes, then shakes her head. “He’s too little. He can’t do anything.”

Jason snarls. He may no longer speak with words but he can understand them just fine. His own ears twitch in a carefully-practiced move. I’m not little.

One of the kids in armour steps out of the crowd and glances at him with mild disdain. “How the hell is he expected to keep up with legion training? He’s just too young!”

Hilde turns and shoots him a glare. “Centurion Moore—”

But before she can say more, Jason lunges at the boy who had stepped forward and sneered at him. He barrels into the boy’s legs with his tiny body, causing the armoured knees to buckle backwards and send the boy toppling to the ground. The impact with the golden metal hurts his shoulder but Jason pushes the pain aside – weakness was not to be tolerated – and lunges for the exposed skin at the boy’s throat where the chestplate ends and leaves the fleshy part of his neck vulnerable.

The kids around them clamour for their weapons and several sharp blades are pointed at Jason as he goes to close his teeth around the boy’s throat and eliminate the enemy.

Then Lupa has him by the collar of his torn and filthy Sesame Street shirt and lifts him off the gasping legionnaire.

She drops him at her side again and freezes him with a look, her body language radiating equal disappointment and exasperation. 

Peace, Jason. You are among allies.

He snarls, the message on his soft face clear. 

Lupa turns back to the crowd. I cannot keep him at my den any longer. He will never grow stronger that way. His destiny is at this Camp, among the ranks of the legion.

But Hilde was shaking her head. “He’s just too little,” she repeats, half-sounding like a broken record, then concedes, “even if he is surprisingly quick.”

Jason shifts his shoulders in pleasure at the praise. He’d worked hard to be able to run faster than the other yearlings in Lupa’s pack, though he still couldn’t beat them in long-distance marathons.

Lupa ducks her head and growls quietly. He has survived his training, which makes him skilled enough to join the legion. Before Hilde can protest again, Lupa’s lip curls and she continues. I care not whether he earns his stripes now or in ten years, only that he faces up to his destiny. But I cannot continue to guide him when he is meant to be here.

Hilde sighs in something like defeat. “Well, we can’t put him with a family in New Rome,” she says, glancing at where a medic is tending to the scratches Jason managed to inflict on the boy before he’d been hauled off by Lupa. “He’s obviously become unadjusted to civilian life and he presents a danger to any retired legionnaires and their own children that might take him in. But none of the cohorts are equipped to deal with a toddler either.”

How you deal with him is of no concern to me. I have brought him here; my part is done.

“Fine,” Hilde snaps, then takes a deep breath. “Fine. We’ll have the auguries read. He’s a Champion of Juno, you said? Who’s his godly parent?”

Lupa’s lips curl in preparation to answer, but at that moment the cold from the river finally catches up to him and Jason sneezes.

A lightning bolt slams into the ground at his feet.

The legionnaires take several collective steps back. One even trips over the boy lying prone on the ground. They watch him with wide eyes, mouths open and shock evident on their faces.

Jason sniffles and rubs at his nose.

Silence reigns over the assembled crowd.

“A son of Jupiter,” Hilde says finally. She’s watching Jason with newfound interest. “One favoured by Juno. That’s… interesting.”

She kneels down in front of him again and reaches for him, beckoning him into her open arms. Chipped pastel pink nail polish is painted on her fingernails and her right arm has a tattoo like everyone else’s, but hers has a wolf's head and eight bars below it.

A wolf. Like Lupa. Jason wonders if that means this girl is meant to be part of his new pack.

It is an omen, Lupa corrects her. He is the harbinger of greatness. He will bring glory to Rome.

Hilde has long black hair that she wears high in a ponytail and her eyes are dark brown instead of bright blue, but when she scoops Jason into her arms, he feels safe.

He feels home.      

oO0Oo

Hilde carries him into a large open-air marble building where wind ruffles his hair and sweeps in from above to dance around him.

Jason clings to Hilde’s shirt but straightens when thunder rumbles overhead, somewhere in the swirling clouds of mist that blow away quickly in the breeze. The noise settles something in his bones, a buzzing in his soul that had kept him on edge for days, ever since he left the den at the Wolf House.

Home. He was sure of it, now. He was home.

“Your father’s temple, Jason,” Hilde explains, shifting his weight onto her hip so she can wave at a kid in a bedsheet standing over a big stone table. “The temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. We’re going to have our augur, Sam, read the will of the gods and tell us if you can join the legion.”

She pauses, like she expects an answer, but Jason stays silent, eyes roving over the marble columns and purple banners hanging from the walls. Lighting flashes in the distant sky and he looks up, but there’s no fear. Lighting is his, just like thunder was, and so Jason could never be scared of it.

The kid at the table turns to greet them. Hilde sets Jason down on the floor and he immediately backs up, hackles raised. The stranger has a knife in their hands, a long golden dagger that Jason narrows his eyes at, and he snarls.

“Put the knife down, Sam,” Hilde says quickly. “Jason’s not… he’ll attack you if he thinks you’re a threat.”

“Seriously?” Sam glances at him, slightly amused, but puts down their knife anyways when they catch the glint of steel in the praetor’s eyes. “What can I do for you, Hilde?”

“Jason needs his augury read. He seeks to join the legion.”

There’s a moment’s pause, like Sam’s waiting for Hilde to tell them she was joking. Jason watches the two of them communicate silently, then Sam shrugs.

They pick their knife up again and turn back to the altar. Jason keeps one eye on them and wanders around the temple. Hilde lets him – there’s nowhere he could really run off to, anyways. She and Sam chat quietly while he makes his way around the other side of the altar and plops himself down at the foot of the giant statue dominating the room.

He tilts his head, studying the painted marble and the large purple sheet wrapped around the god’s waist and left shoulder. Thunder rumbles overhead and Jason watches as lightning flashes, reflecting in the polished stone of Jupiter’s eyes, making him seem almost alive. 

Behind Jason, Sam makes a quiet noise of triumph. He turns to see them holding a stuffed animal, a lamb, with a large rip in its stomach, the fluff spilling out onto the altar.

Sam grins down at him. “Good news, Jason! You can join the legion.” Jason doesn’t really know what that means, nor does he really care, and returns to watching the statue of Jupiter.

Then Sam makes a sound like they choked on their own tongue and Jason turns again to see the augur’s face pale, all the colour draining from their dark skin until they looked washed out, like a corpse. Jason has seen corpses before, when the pack brought down a kill. But Sam was still breathing, their chest rising and falling rapidly and eyes darting around the fluff on the altar in alarm, and Jason turns fully to face the kid, rising to his tiptoes to try to see over the top of the altar. 

Hilde quickly swoops down and lifts Jason into her arms, shifting her body so Jason can’t see what’s on the altar. She and Sam exchange a few quick, hurried words and Sam waves their hands around wildly, gesturing to the statue and back to the fluff.

Jason only catches a few words of their rushed conversation, but he hears destiny and fate and prophecy, and wonders what it means.

He meets the gaze of Jupiter’s statue again and wonders if his father knows.

oO0Oo

Jason adjusts to Camp and living amongst humans again. He starts speaking with words and learns to sleep in a bed rather than on the ground. He stops snarling at potential challenges and biting perceived threats.

Mostly.

Sort of.

At least half the time.

And the other half… Well, that probatio had been told to stay away. The crescent of fresh scars on her arm serves as a warning to everyone else.

He does apologize, though. But only because Hilde makes him.

oO0Oo

He asks about Hilde’s tattoo one night as she’s getting him ready for bed.

She pulls him into her lap and extends her arm, showing him the wolf head and service lines seared into the soft flesh of her forearm. 

“Do you remember the stories I told you about Romulus and Remus and how they were suckled by Lupa in the ancient times?” Jason nods. “Well, Romulus killed Remus early on in Rome’s founding, but when Romulus himself died in battle many years later, the gods decided to deify him, giving him the name Quirinus and the job as the guardian of the Roman state. Quirinus is my great-grandfather.”

Jason blinks, thinking hard. “So,” he says slowly, “if Lupa was, like, his mom, does that make her your grandma?”

Hilde opens her mouth to answer, pauses, closes it again, brows furrowing and a strange pinched expression forming on her face.

“I… never really thought about it, to be honest.”

She puts him to bed after that and leaves the room without saying goodnight, muttering under her breath in Latin, that pinched expression still on her face.

Jason watches her leave and doesn’t understand what he said wrong.

oO0Oo

Jason fidgets on the little stool at the front of the room. The debate in the senate house has been going on for ever and he just wants to run around and play with the new soccer ball Sam brought back from the mortal world for him. 

Hilde notices and reaches down to put a hand on his shoulder. The weight of it should be comforting, but it feels like she’s holding him in place. 

“You need to pay attention, Jason. Someday, you will sit here and lead the legion.”

He frowns and draws his knees up to his chest. The hot summer sun outside beckons but his duty means he must stay here. 

oO0Oo

Most people would say a military camp was no place for a toddler, but most people aren’t demigods. Hilde can’t take care of him all the time – she’s praetor and has a responsibility to the legion first – but there’s no shortage of people to watch over him.

He attends school five days a week in the city, after they’d determined he’d become readjusted enough to not pose any immediate threat to his classmates, and the little classroom prepares him for life on the battlefield just as much as the days he spends in the legion.

Where other children learn A is for Apple, B is for Ball, C is for Cat, Jason learns A is for Amphisbaena, B is for Basilisk, C is for Centaur. Instead of science and music, he learns battle tactics and military history. He learns Latin instead of Spanish or French. When they have gym, they alternate between drilling with wooden practice weapons and playing a complicated game that combines dodgeball and tag with an obstacle course. It’s Jason’s favourite class of the day.

The little classroom is a single room building near the downtown of New Rome, where about two dozen or so kids between the ages of four and ten learn the basic academic skills they will need to serve in the legion and potentially integrate back into the mortal world after they retire, if that’s what they want.

For the most part, Jason’s happy at school. His dyslexia, which is what the teacher said made the letters go all funny, makes traditional classroom learning difficult, but then again, everyone in his class struggles with the same thing, so it’s not like he’s alone there. He’s good at gym and proves, even at a young age, that he has a mind for tactics and analyzing battlefields. His classmates are mostly too young to understand who his father is and why it makes him important, so they don’t really treat him any differently.

But he’s also the only one of his classmates who doesn’t have a parent that picks him up at the end of the day, and it’s a long, lonely walk back to the barracks. 

oO0Oo

During the summer, when school is out, Jason trains with the legion. 

He watches them fight, tracking the lightning-fast movements of their swords with his eyes and committing them to memory. He memorizes which commands yelled by the centurions do what, and which ones the praetors use to command the entire legion. He studies the ways they move when they practice falling from the giant eagles during aerial combat, how they tuck and roll their bodies to lessen the impact with the ground.

He’s still too little to keep up with the older kids in the legion, but when he’s left alone, he finds one of the statues of Terminus near the Pomerian Line and practices the things he saw in front of the god, just out of range of the border so he doesn’t get yelled at (well, any more than the god usually does), and sometimes Terminus even offers advice and corrections on his techniques. 

Sometimes, Terminus makes him do silly things like move sticks and rocks or measure the height of all the flowers in the field and pull any that weren’t exactly two and a half inches tall, and sometimes he’s given the task of holding onto the possessions of the praetors and senators when they head off to a senate meeting.

But most of the time, when he’s exhausted and sweaty and his limbs are trembling with exertion, he’ll flop onto the cool grass and watch the clouds shift across the sky, imagining that it’s his father making funny shapes in the clouds for him to find. 

Sometimes, he asks Terminus to tell him stories of the old days, and he falls asleep, grass tickling his face, to stories of gods and heroes and the glory of Ancient Rome.

oO0Oo

Jason is seven and enters the armoury for the first time.

It’s a large brick building with terracotta roof tiles situated on a hill overlooking the Field of Mars. He stands at the arched doorway, Hilde at his side, and listens patiently as she speaks with the guard on duty. 

There’s gold everywhere. Swords hang in scabbards on the walls, pila are displayed on racks on the far side, their blades glinting in the sunlight streaming through the large windows. There’s a whole collection of dummies wearing a mixture of gold and leather armour flanking the door, and all kinds of knives are scattered about on tables across the room. There’s a handful of bows and quivers of arrows, too, but less of them, tucked away in one corner.

Hilde lets him explore the room with a warning not to touch anything without asking, and goes to study the sets of armour for something his size.

Jason wanders the armoury, standing on his tiptoes to see the knives on the tables and craning his neck to study the swords on the wall, but he’s too short to really reach anything easily.

Hilde and the other officers had decided that he was old enough now to start his training. They said it was better that he got used to drilling in full kit and with a weighted weapon as soon as possible, because they’re expecting great things from him. Jason understands that. He’s the son of Jupiter; everyone looks at him and expects more.

It’s fine. He’ll rise to the challenge.

He trails his hand along the edge of a table, absentmindedly studying the knives gleaming golden in the midday sun. None of them call to him, but he already knew they wouldn’t act as his primary weapon. Every legionnaire was issued with a pugio as a sidearm and a pilum as their basic kit, plus a longer blade of their choice, normally a gladius, and a standard rectangular shield. They were trained to be proficient in numerous weapons, but when it came down to it, the weapon of the Roman soldier was the sword.

Jason pauses mid-stride when his hand knocks something off the table and metal clangs against the tile floor. He bends down and picks up a golden coin, dented in several places and worn with time, but it gleams no less brilliantly. An aureus – and one made of Imperial gold no less. He’s never seen one like it before.

“Hilde?” he calls over his shoulder, but she’s too far away to hear him.

He turns the coin over in his hand and the sunlight catches the glint of imprinting on the metal. On the opposite face of the war axe, the laureate cuirassed bust of a man was just barely visible, the image worn down over the years. Curling above the man’s head were the letters I.V.L.I.U.S.

IVLIUS.

Julius.

Jason’s eyes widen. No way. 

Logically, he knows that many of the weapons in this armoury were very old and that they were their birthright as demigods, but to hold something this old? Insane. 

He’s quite literally holding a piece of his heritage in his hands. 

“Hilde? Hilde, look at this!” Jason turns back to the praetor, who pauses in her conversation with the camp’s quartermaster.

“Yes, Jason? Did you find a gladius you prefer?”

“Even better!” Jason jogs over to them, brandishing the coin between his fingers. “Look— Woah! ”

At that moment, he trips over his untied shoelaces and goes sprawling face-first on the ground. The coin goes flying from his grip, spinning over itself in the air. There’s a flash of light and the gleam of metal reflecting sunlight then— CLANG!

Jason yelps as a long rod of Imperial gold hits the ground, unfortunately whacking him across the back of the head as it falls. With another quiet clatter, the part of the shaft that had landed on top of him rolls off his shoulders and onto the floor, and then the only sound is Jason’s groans and the utter silence from the two others in the armoury.

Hilde reaches for the pilum that had materialized from the coin, studying it as Jason gets to his feet, rubbing the swelling knot on the back of his head.

“I—uh,” Jason points at the pilum. “That’s what I wanted to show you. It’s a coin.”

She looks up at him. “Jason,” she says seriously. “This is a spear.”

“No, I swear it was a coin when I found it!” Jason says, holding his hands out for the pilum. “Watch.”

Hilde and the quartermaster exchange silent looks. Jason draws himself up straighter, sets his shoulders firmly against whatever argument that were bound to have.

But they don’t say anything. Instead, Hilde hands him back the pilum. “How did it become a pilum, then?”

Jason considers the weapon in his hands. It’s more than twice his size, heavy but perfectly balanced. The pointed tip gleams sharply in the sunlight. 

On a hunch, he shifts his hand down the shaft and flips it. The javelin spins through the air and there’s another flash of light, then suddenly Jason’s reaching out to catch the coin again.

Silence. He risks a glance at Hilde and the quartermaster, only to find them both staring slack-jawed at him.

“So, um, can I keep it?” Jason asks hopefully.

Hilde shakes off her shock. Her eyes gleam with interest. “Show me again,” she demands. 

Jason obliges, but when he catches the weapon, it’s a golden sword, not a javelin. 

“Interesting…” Hilde falls silent and studies Jason and the blade in his hands. Like the pilum, it’s balanced perfectly, the pommel balancing out the weight of the blade. The leather grip fits his hand like he was born for it. 

“I’ve got to say,” the quartermaster breaks the silence with a nervous grin. “I think that’s the strangest way a legionnaire has ever found their weapon.”

Jason flips the sword back into a coin and catches it from the air. 

The Imperial gold metal is warm to the touch, like it accepts him as its wielder. 

He passes another milestone and the clock keeps ticking. 

oO0Oo

Jason is eight years old and people are starting to throw around the words prodigy and gifted and hero and saviour.

He hears the whispers when he goes to weapons practice, when he drills with the legionnaires in the arena, when his team wins at Death Ball.

Jason is eight years old and Hilde dies on a trip to the mortal world. She’d gone out to see a friend, a retired legionnaire who’d decided to attend a dance school in Berkley. 

She never saw the car coming.

Jason is eight years old and suddenly the word hero tastes bitter in his mouth.

oO0Oo

They call a Senate meeting to decide what to do with him.

Everyone’s there: senators, centurions, Praetor Lucas Vant, lares, veterans from the city who cram themselves into the seats at the back of the senate house.

He’s stood in front of this assembled group dozens of times, if not more, but suddenly being the focus of their attention is different. It wasn’t like this when he sat on a special chair next to Hilde, listening to debates he hardly understood but was required to learn from anyways. The chair next to Lucas’ is empty. Her absence is like a hole in the pit of his stomach, one he’s never quite sure will heal.

It reminds him of losing another black-haired sister, years ago. Hilde had looked nothing like Thalia but she’d been there to fill the void that had been left when he’d been taken away by Lupa, and now she too was gone.

He was alone again.

The words of the senators buzz in his ears, hardly breaking through the screaming in his mind. There’s no doubt they’ll let him join the legion proper – that had already been decided years ago by Sam and the auguries, and he’s been participating in legionary activities for several years already – but now they have to decide where to put him. Every centurion is clamouring to have him in their cohort, even the First and Second, though he has no reference letters.

Still, Lupa herself had brought him to Camp Jupiter years ago and he’d grown up shadowing the legion as they trained and fought, striving to make himself stronger, to make them proud. Hilde had taken him in when he was three and he supposes the favour of a praetor, even – his throat seizes – even a dead one, is better than most.

He’s the son of Jupiter, too. They never let him forget that.

Eight is the age of the end of his childhood, in Ancient Rome. True, he’s still not an adult in either the eyes of Rome or modern American law, but he’s no longer a kid. He’s expected to step up, to dedicate his sword arm to the legion and lay down his life for the empire if necessary.

Legionnaires on probatio could be no younger than eight. That was the decision made years ago, during Camp Jupiter’s founding. Eight years old would allow for the individual to reach the age of majority by the time they’d finished their ten-year service in the legion and give them the option to decide how to live the next stages of their life. 

Even still, children that young are rare, in the legion. Most either haven’t figured out they’re demigods yet or their parents in New Rome refuse to send them for another few years. There’s an unspoken rule that even the Romans think eight is too young to serve, but they can’t do anything about it.

Jason’s lived in the legion for more than five years now, and he’s never seen a legionnaire younger than ten.

He supposes he’ll be the first. The exception to the unspoken rule.

His mouth goes dry. There are always exceptions made for him.

“Jason Grace!” Lucas’ voice cuts through the swirling thoughts in his brain and he’s instantly standing at attention.

“Yes, praetor?”

Lucas sighs. “Were you even listening to what I said?”

Jason’s ears feel hot and he clears his throat. “Sorry.”

The praetor sends a disapproving look his way and Jason struggles not to shrink back.

“All the cohorts have declared they will stand for you,” Lucas repeats, gesturing at the assembled centurions. His SPQR tattoo glows in the torchlight – a javelin wrapped in a cloak, the symbol of Virtus, and six score marks representing six years of service. 

For as long as he could remember, Jason had wanted one of those tattoos. He’d lived in the legion for nearly as long as the praetor before him had, but he’d never been permitted his tattoos. He’d been too young.

Now he was old enough to serve, albeit barely. And all the cohorts wanted him.

He’d known that already. The whispers that had always followed him had only gotten louder the past few weeks, when it became clear that Jason would be folded into the ranks of the legion rather than shuffled off to another ranking officer after Hilde’s death.

It was all he’d ever wanted since he was old enough to want anything.

But now it settles bitterly in his chest. They don’t want him because he’s Jason; they want the son of Jupiter. They don’t care that he’s young and small and knows more about the legion than just about anybody. They want the prestige of saying We have the son of Jupiter in our cohort, look at how cool we are. They want the power he represents and the status his father bestowed upon him with his birth.

He lets his eyes rove over the assembled senate, studying each centurion in turn. His gaze lingers on the Fifth Cohort’s centurions. Gwen Hartwood, daughter of Ceres, newly promoted three months before, stands nervously next to Kahlil Perkins, legacy of Arcus. He’s heard the jeers and taunts thrown at the members of the Fifth Cohort, the way they always lose the War Games and somehow end up with the worst jobs at Camp. 

It’s not right. His father may be king of Olympus, but he is also the god of justice. Camp Jupiter may forget that about him, but Jason holds fast to his legacy. Something smoulders within him, an ember being fanned back to life. He knows what he’s going to do.

A cold wind sweeps through the senate house, sending the torches sputtering and ruffling his hair. The senators exchange looks with one another. 

“If they will have me,” Jason says, voice loud and steady in the room. “I seek to join the Fifth Cohort.”

Stunned silence echoes throughout the room. Everyone is staring at him, wondering if they heard him correctly.

“Ah, Jason,” Lucas clears his throat. “Are you sure? I did say that you could join any cohort, right? Any one of them would accept you, so—”

“It’s my decision, isn’t it, praetor?” Jason asks, turning to the older boy with his hands locked behind his back in parade rest. “I chose the Fifth.”

“You’re denying a great opportunity,” Lucas warns, and the senate shifts uneasily as the air becomes thick with ozone. 

Jason takes a deep breath. “I chose the Fifth,” he repeats, tone leaving no room for argument.

Lucas watches him for several more moments, then sighs and turns to the senate as a whole. “Centurions Hartwood and Perkins, do you accept Jason into your cohort?”

Kahlil is staring at him in utter shock and disbelief and it’s Gwen that speaks up after an uneasy silence stretches. “Of course we do!” she says quickly, then clears her throat. “Our cohort has spoken. We accept the recruit.”

“Very well.” Lucas sounded defeated. Jason felt a bit bad about giving him a headache, especially when he’s forced to shoulder a job meant for two until the Feast of Fortuna, but the praetor deserved it. Jason was still seething internally at the slights the senate had offered the Fifth, at the way they were treated as somehow lesser than their comrades.

I will change that, Jason promises himself.

“Jason Grace, you stand on probatio. In one year’s time, or as soon as you complete an act of valour, you will become a full member of the Twelfth Legion Fulminata.” He turns to pick up a small package from his chair and presents Jason with his probatio tablet. 

“Serve Rome, obey the rules of the legion, and defend the camp with honour. Senatus Populusque Romanus!”

Jason accepts the tablet and hangs it around his neck as the Senate echoes the cheer, feeling the coolness of the clay settle gently against his skin.

The weight of it is a promise Jason will never break.

oO0Oo

His first year in the legion comes to an end and he graduates from probatio to a full member of the Fifth Cohort.

Lucas takes the probatio tablet from around Jason’s neck and sets it to one side. The new praetor, Kian Reynolds, sits in Hilde’s chair, and Jason can’t help the pang of longing in his chest when he sees it.

“Your arm,” Sam says, and steadies Jason’s proffered arm with their steady hands. Then they raise their arms to the heavens. “We accept Jason Grace, Son of Jupiter, to the Twelfth Legion Fulminata for his first year of service. Do you pledge your life to the senate and the people of Rome?”

Jason nods firmly. “I do.”

The senate explodes in cheers of “ Senatus Populusque Romanus!” as fire blazes on his arm.

For a moment, all Jason knows is the searing pain of his tattoo being burned into his skin, but when the smoke clears, he stares down at his forearm in shock.

Six stripes. Not one, like he was supposed to get, but six – one for each year he’s lived in the legion.

His arm is pink and steaming, residual heat blistering the skin around his new tattoo, but he doesn’t dare cry. Crying is a weakness that will not be accepted.

He turns to Lucas and Kian, their own surprise evident on their faces. Sam is watching him with an unreadable expression, their brow furrowed and eyes not quite in the present, like they were remembering the augury they’d read the day Jason had come to camp and was just now realizing that it was coming true.

The eagle steams above the SPQR and six score marks on the inside of his forearm. He’s never felt pain as great as when the gods had cast down their might to permanently swear him into their service, but when he’s given a piece of ambrosia to heal the burns, he swears he’s never tasted anything so sweet.

oO0Oo

Even though he’s a full member of the legion, he’s still required to attend the rest of his regular classes at the school in New Rome until he’s ten, when he joins the rest of the legion in the more advanced classes taught as part of their training regime.

His younger classmates admire the probatio tablet he wears, and then the SPQR tattoo on his forearm.

They ask if it hurts.

Yes, Jason wants to say. My flesh was smouldering and steaming, it blistered and peeled away like the world’s worst sunburn.

Instead, he forces a grin and says what’s expected of him.

“Nah, not a bit.”

oO0Oo

Every year, like clockwork, a new line burns itself into his skin beneath his SPQR tattoo. 

oO0Oo

Jason’s twelve when they summon him to the Senate house and he knows, with a sinking feeling, what’s about to happen. He’s avoided the inevitable long enough.

Kahlil had decided to marry his girlfriend and retire to New Rome, resigning from the legion after thirteen years of service, and now the Fifth Cohort is down a centurion. Now, all eyes turn to him to fill the position.

It’s not fair! Jason wants to protest. His tattoo marks nine years of service but in reality, he’s only been an active member of the legion for four, and he hasn’t been on a quest yet. He doesn’t even qualify for the position!

But as always, exceptions were made for him. Because of who his father is and because of the expectations everyone has.

Lucas pins the centurion’s badge to his purple shirt and Jason should feel happy, he should feel proud, but he doesn’t. He just feels cheated. 

oO0Oo

Jason’s twelve and he gets some strange looks from first-generation probatios when they see him among the ranks of his cohort, and he has to stifle a laugh.

It’s even funnier when they find out he’s their commanding officer.

oO0Oo

Sometimes, Jason wonders if his father is proud of him. 

Jupiter never sends a sign. 

He supposes he’ll never know. 

oO0Oo

Jason is thirteen years old when he sees the Prophecy of Seven for the first time. 

Septem dimidia sanguines eorum respondet / Nec ignibus corrupisset espugnare mundus pereat / Ut cum spiritu postrema sacramentum dejuremus / Et hostes ornamenta addent ad ianuam necem

Nec ignibus corrupisset espugnare mundus pereat. To storm or fire the world must fall. 

The words resonate in his bones. The pounding of his heart sounds like a clock ticking. 

oO0Oo

Octavian takes over the job as augur after Sam completes their ten years of service and retires to the mortal world.

Jason doesn’t like the legacy of Apollo. The boy, a few years older than him, is arrogant and twisty, with a gleam in his eyes that tells Jason that he’s not satisfied with being both centurion and augur and will do whatever it takes to rise through the ranks.

Still, Jason’s a loyal Roman and he stands in the Senate as the senators and other centurions debate the problem of a sea monster that’s terrorizing Bolinas Bay and interfering with the legion’s scouting parties to Mount Tam.

He’s thirteen and has been a centurion for a little over a year, now has ten stripes on his arm that mark him as one of the most senior campers in the Twelfth Legion. 

He’s thirteen and vibrating with nervous excitement as the senate votes on his first quest.

oO0Oo

The mortal world is nothing like Jason expected. He hasn’t left the boundaries of Camp Jupiter except for sentry duty at the Caldecott tunnel since he arrived when he was three.

He finds himself in awe of every neon sign, every fast food restaurant advertising special meal deals, all the children his own age playing soccer in the school yard or exiting dollar stores with bags full of junk food and sugar-high grins on their faces.

Jason breathes in the smell of exhaust and sea air and wonders if this is what it feels like to be free.

oO0Oo

The fight with the Trojan sea monster goes wrong almost immediately.

Either the Senate had severely underestimated the monster’s size, or else it’s been downing steroids like energy drinks. 

It’s huge, easily five times as big as the largest sailing yachts moored in the harbour, and without a ship of their own, Jason and his two companions don’t have a chance at fighting it in the water. 

He’s actually kind of glad for that, because the thought of wading into the sea, away from neutral ground and into another god’s domain, makes something in his gut twist.

James Xu, son of Salus, lies crumpled on the sand, blood plastering his dark hair to his skull. He’s not moving. Jason can’t tell if he’s unconscious or… Or…

He can’t think like that.

“Kennedy!” he shouts, hoping the daughter of Vulcan can hear him over the roar of the whirlpool surrounding the monster. “Distract it! I have an idea!”

“What about James?” she yells back and he only has a moment to think before he’s diving out of the way of a jet of boiling water.

“Try to drag him clear of the beach!”

The sky is overcast and the January air is chilly, which he’s thankful for. It means there’s no mortals on the beach or in the boats anchored nearby. He doesn’t want any to end up as casualties in this fight.

He summons the winds to him, bending them to his will and rocketing into the sky high above the Trojan sea monster.

“Hey! Fish food!” he hears Kennedy yell, then another shout as she rolls out of the way of a jet of boiling water. He glances at her out of the corner of his eyes and sees her picking her way across the beach, ducking behind sand dunes and closed changing huts every time the creature turns its ire on her. 

Jason knows he has to move fast. He doesn’t want Kennedy to make it to James while he’s still lying prone and she has the monster’s attention.

 But the winds have brought him closer to it, now. Storm clouds brew in the horizon, thunder rumbling in the distance.

He’s never actually tried to consciously summon lighting before. He’s told he was claimed upon his arrival to camp because he’d sneezed and nearly struck the crowd with a bolt that hit the ground at his tiny feet, but he doesn’t remember how he did it.

Now, as the smell of ozone surrounds him and the pressure drops so fast his ears pop, he can only pray to Jupiter for aid.

A bolt of lighting explodes from the gathering storm clouds above and hits his sword, searing hot as it comes near his body and blinding white, ricocheting to the monster fifty feet below.

The sea monster shrieks and writhes as the lightning runs through its body and into the ocean surrounding it, the cresting waves crackling with electricity.

Jason watches in fascinated horror as the monster freezes, gaping maw open and spear-like teeth on display, before crashing into the water. The tidal wave from the impact of the monster’s body actually knocks him right out of the sky and he plummets to the ground, just barely managing to catch himself before he faceplants into a sand dune.

His head buzzes and his vision swims. The world is tinged spotty yellow and the smell of burning sea monster doesn’t help the nausea that is churning in his stomach.

He groans and rolls over, sand sticking to his soaking clothes. Every muscle aches, his bones feeling like they’re trembling beneath his skin. He’s pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to blow a fuse in this state.

He wants nothing more than to collapse in the sand and sleep for a week, but he has a quest to lead. With another groan, he pushes himself to his knees and comes face to face with Kennedy and James.

She’s staring at him in horror, expression slack and eyes wide. James, thank the gods, is awake and lucid, though his eyes are unfocused as he assesses his surroundings. The wound on his head seems to have mostly stopped bleeding.

“Jason…” she says, then her voice fails her.

She keeps staring at him in horror, but then Jason realizes she isn’t staring at him, but rather behind him.

With great difficulty, he turns just in time to see the steaming corpse of the Trojan sea monster dissolve into golden dust, leaving behind an eye and several of those sharp teeth.

But that wasn’t what caught Kennedy’s attention.

It was the beach.

For half a mile down the coast, everywhere the lightning passed through damp sand, Jason had turned the shoreline to glass.

oO0Oo

The years pass by. Many of the legionnaires who were serving when Jason had been brought to Camp Jupiter long ago are either dead or retired.

At fourteen, he is now one of the senior campers, one of the longest-standing soldiers in the Twelfth Legion.

More and more often, he feels their eyes upon him, watching him.

Sometimes he feels like he’s running out of time, constantly chasing the grains of sand in an hourglass, the weight of everyone’s expectations on him overwhelming.

oO0Oo

The legion titters uneasily when Jason picks Reyna from the Third Cohort to accompany him and one of the legionnaires from his own cohort – Liam Young, son of Mercury – on his quest to salvage Imperial gold from secret cashes across the country.

But Jason’s almost fifteen and a centurion; there isn’t much the legion can do about it. The senate votes to allow his companions to come with him, but still, the senators and other centurions exchange looks with one another. There’s no rule that says a centurion’s questing companions have to be from their cohort, but it is traditional.

Jason has led Liam into battle during the War Games and has trained beside him for two years now – he’s a good fighter, quick on his feet and more than capable with a sword. Even better, as a son of Mercury, he has a natural talent for worming his way into places he’s not supposed to be, which can only help them when they have to liberate Imperial gold stores from mortal museums and private collections.

Reyna, on the other hand, is his best friend. Even though she’s from the Third and he the Fifth, they get along well together and often partner for activities whenever possible. She’s a natural warrior with a calculating gaze, like she’s assessing a battlefield every time she steps into a room. She walks like there’s a weight on her shoulders, like she understands having to grow up fast and step up to carry the burden of responsibility.

She’s like him, and it makes Jason breathe easier to have her by his side.

oO0Oo

Their quest takes three months. 

They’re not the only trio sent out by the camp – there’s far too much stashed Imperial gold for any one team to get, so every centurion had been sent to a different location across the country – but they are the team that’s sent the farthest.

Unfortunately, that also means they’re the farthest away from camp when they need help.

One month into their journey across America, they stumble into a den of Cyclopes. 

Jason feels so stupid. He’d known that the east was dangerous land for a Roman demigod and that their scouts had reported an increase in monster activity in the region. He’d known that and had still led them into a trap anyways.

The warehouse in Detroit is shrouded in shadows, despite the dozens of lumbering forms that move up and down the assembly lines of car parts and other assorted machines, and Jason squints to see better in the darkness as he, Reyna, and Liam peek out from around a cement support column and watch the scene in horror.

They’d ducked into what they’d thought was an empty warehouse to escape the torrential downpour that had come upon them suddenly, and hadn’t realized where they were until it was far too late.

One of the Cyclopes lifts a glowing-hot war axe from a forge and tempers it in a trough of cold water. Steam hisses, filling the air with the smell of burning steel. The small fires in the forges flicker throughout the warehouse, casting the barest glow of light that hardly does anything to dispel the darkness.

Liam elbows him, wide-eyed. What do we do? he mouths.

Jason can only shrug back in response, equally stunned. He has no idea, no clever plan that will allow them to escape unnoticed.

Liam grits his teeth. There’s too many for them all to fight, they know that. And there’s no way they could easily find their way back to the warehouse door in the dark, not without tripping over something and making noise, alerting the Cyclopes to their presence.

“A diversion,” Liam leans over and whispers, so quietly Jason can hardly hear him.

Both Jason and Reyna whirl around to glare at him. Their combined looks say No!

“It’ll be fine.” Liam gives them a strained smile. “I’ll crawl across the catwalk and knock over some boxes at the end or throw something into the darkness – just enough that they turn their attention away from us and the door.”

“You’ll be killed!” Jason whispers furiously. “I won’t allow it.”

“Got any better ideas, centurion?” Liam asks, and Jason wishes he could refute him. But he can see no other option, and Liam is the fastest of the three of them and the best silent mover in the cohort, so maybe he has a chance of pulling it off.

“Fine.” Jason swallows down the uneasy feeling growing in his chest. “Be quick, Liam.”

Liam gives him a devilish grin, visible only by the flash of his teeth in the blackness, and rises to a crouch. In only a moment, he’s vanished.

Reyna lets out a surprised breath beside him. “I didn’t realize he could move like that.”

Jason nods, then realizes that Reyna wouldn’t be able to see the gesture in the darkness. “He’s won us more than a few War Games with that trick. Something he inherited from his dad, I think. Mercury being the god of thieves, after all.”

They don’t have to wait long. Seconds later there’s a loud CRASH from the other side of the warehouse, and all the Cyclopes pause in what they’re doing. Several move in the direction of the noise.

Jason squints into the darkness and scans the catwalk above for any sign of movement, but to his horror, the warehouse suddenly explodes into light. He’s blinded for a moment as he blinks the spots out of his eyes, then stares at the scene before him in incomprehensible horror.

One of the Cyclopes, a male with greasy black hair and a single yellow eye, holds a lit emergency flare in one hand, and in the other…

Reyna stifles a scream next to him. Jason can hardly breathe.

In the other hand he holds the prone form of Liam Young.

One of Liam’s arms is wrenched unnaturally from the socket and he’s covered in cuts and lacerations like he’d been thrown backwards into the jagged metal of the catwalk, but he doesn’t look seriously injured.

Then he spits a mouthful of blood at the Cyclopes’ feet, the movement causing a coughing fit that has more blood bubbling up between his lips, and Jason’s heart sinks as he realizes that Liam must have broken some ribs, possibly puncturing something inside his chest.

But that’s fine. They can fix that, they have nectar and ambrosia in their packs, as well as several canteens of unicorn draught. They just have to get Liam out of here.

It’s fine. They’ll be fine.

 “Ma!” the Cyclops grins, crooked yellow teeth on full display. “Can we eat ‘im?”

Jason makes a strangled sort of grunt in the back of his throat.

One of the other Cyclopes snarls something that sounds suspiciously like “Salsa,” and the Cyclops holding Liam lowers him slightly in defeat.

“Yes, Ma…” 

Liam groans as he’s jostled, then glares at the Cyclops. “You don’t want to eat me. I’m – I’m on medication! I’d taste really bad and… and might even give you indigestion!”

‘Ma’ grins at him, her expression identical to that of the one holding him. “A nice try, demigod. But we Northern Cyclopes have strong stomachs, and all of your kind are tasty with salsa.”

Liam's throat bobs as he swallows thickly. Jason and Reyna can only watch in horror as their friend wheezes out a laboured breath. 

“Don’t die on me!” Ma warns. “I like my meat fresh.” Then she pauses, as though an idea had occurred to her. “A godling in a purple shirt comes into my warehouse? You’re on a quest, aren’t you, son of Mercury?” Jason jolts. How had Ma known Liam’s parentage? “Where are your little friends, demigod?”

Liam’s answer is another mouthful of blood spat at her.

“Fine!” Ma wipes the bloody spittle off her cheek and snarls. “Search the warehouse! They’ll be around here somewhere. Find them and then we’ll feast!”

The deep voices of several dozen Cyclopes roar their approval and Liam twists violently to face where Jason and Reyna are watching, paralyzed, from behind the cement column.

“Go!” he shouts. “Go!” 

Jason gives Liam the dignity of pretending he didn’t hear the teen’s voice crack with despair on the last note. He can hardly move, frozen in horror watching the scene unfold.

“Go! G–” Liam’s voice is cut off with a strangled cry when the Cyclopes jostles him up and down as he whirls to look for Jason and Reyna, the noise more of a wet gurgle than anything, like the last shrieks of a drowning man. 

“Jason, we’ve got to go!” Reyna cries, tugging him to his feet. Across the warehouse, Cyclopes snatch half-made weapons from the conveyor belts and run towards them, the ground shaking beneath their feet.

He’s never flown with more than just himself before, but he has to try. He won’t let another person die on his watch.

He pulls Reyna close and hardly waits for her to lock her arms around his waist before he’s summoning the winds and shooting straight up, breaking right through a skylight on the way out, showering them in broken glass and plaster. 

Jason looks down just in time to see the Cyclops twist Liam’s head abruptly.

Though the storm rages around them and the bellow of the Cyclopes could be heard even from hundreds of feet below, Jason swears the CRACK of his friend’s bones shattering is deafening.

oO0Oo

Jason doesn’t make it far before his strength fails him and it’s all he can do to control their descent enough that they don’t crash into the ground.

They hit asphalt hard enough that a painful jolt runs up his legs and then he’s releasing Reyna, turning away just in time to vomit his guts up onto the side of the road.

“Was that the first time you’ve seen someone die?” Reyna asks him as he coughs and wipes at his mouth with his sleeve. Her tone is neutral, not comforting but not judging, either.

“I’ve seen some bad injuries before,” Jason says weakly, “but…”

He doesn’t finish the sentence. Nausea curls in his gut, threatening to make him throw up again.

But there’s more than just fear and adrenaline coursing through his veins. It takes him a moment to realize what it is.

It’s shame.

He was supposed to lead this quest, to keep his legionnaires safe. He is the one with more than a decade’s worth of experience, the senior camper out of their trio.

Duo, now.

Jason feels like he’s going to throw up again. 

Their quest has been reduced to just the two of them, and it’s all his fault.

oO0Oo

They mourn Liam on a quiet beach states away from Detroit.

Liam had been born in Nantucket and had always wanted to return there after completing his service in the legion. Now, he’ll never get to. His body won’t even rest here.

Jason swallows past the lump in his throat as Reyna carefully places a folded Camp Jupiter shirt into the hole they’d dug in the soft, sandy earth of the dunes a few hundred yards from the shore. 

Traditionally, Romans were cremated upon death, but they don’t have a body to burn, nor a shroud to bury in its place, so this shirt is the best they can do for their fallen friend. 

Reyna stands and swipes a sandy hand across her cheek, brushing away the tear that had fallen there. For all that Jason suspects she’s trying to hide it, he knows she’s struggling to fight the same guilt and shame he is. 

He and Reyna stare at the hole in silence for another few moments, then Jason clears his throat. As senior camper and Liam’s centurion, it falls to him to make the eulogy. 

“Liam, this isn’t the funeral you deserved, nor the way you deserved to die. You served Rome with pride and dedication, your two years of service marked on your arm with the honour of the gods. When you took that oath so many years ago, you swore to lay down your life in the defence of Rome, but you deserved so much better than the fate you got.” Jason’s voice cracks and his eyes burn, but he forces himself to stand tall. 

“For your sacrifice in the line of duty and your courage in defending your fellow citizens of Rome, I, Jason Grace, son of Jupiter, Centurion of the Fifth Cohort, do posthumously award you the corona civica and all the honours that come with it. At ease, legionnaire, that is your final order. I await you in the Hall of Heroes, in Elysium.”

He keeps his eyes fixed on the horizon, refusing to look at either the shirt or Reyna, though he can feel her eyes on him. The civic crown wasn’t a medal the Romans awarded to a dead legionnaire, but Jason doesn’t care. Liam deserved more than an unmarked grave and an empty cremation urn. He would put the civic crown in Liam’s niche in the legion’s mausoleum himself, if he needed to. Maybe it was time that Rome started honouring those who died in their service the same way they did with those who lived.

Jason swears it to himself then, as he bends down to shift the earth back into the grave, that he would make Liam’s sacrifice mean something.

oO0Oo

The wound of Liam’s death hasn’t healed, but it’s no longer so tender to the touch by the time Jason and Reyna finally make it to Charleston, South Carolina.

They walk through the ornate streets and through beautiful parks. Jason’s astonished to see how much it reminds him of New Rome. Somehow, on the other side of the country, it makes him feel homesick.

Then they see the ghost in Battery Park. 

A southern belle, dressed in the fashion of the nineteenth century – about the time of the Civil War, if Jason was to hazard a guess. The ghost isn’t a monster or a spirit, and definitely not a mortal phenomenon, but it disappears every time they get close.

Then Reyna furrows her brow and suggests that she speak to it alone, that it might only want to speak to another woman. 

Jason wants to protest – the last time they got separated, one of their group had died.

But she points out a little cafe a hundred or so metres away where he could wait, so after making her promise that she’ll be careful, he goes and sits at a little round table surrounded by honeysuckle and roses.

Reyna takes long enough to return that he orders sandwiches for both of them and drinks two glasses of coke. When she does come back, her expression is troubled and she won’t meet his eyes.

“What’s wrong?” he asks through a mouthful of ham sandwich.

“Nothing,” she says, picking at the fries on the side of her plate. “It’s nothing. The – uh, the ghost gave me directions to the C.S.S Hunley.”

She avoids any more of his attempts to make conversation and he gets the feeling that the subject of the ghost is closed.

oO0Oo

Even after they’ve salvaged the Imperial gold torpedoes from the C.S.S Hunley and escaped the angry Confederate ghosts that chased them through the streets of Charleston, Reyna doesn’t say more than a handful of words to him.

They pack the torpedoes in a large duffle bag along with the other Imperial gold objects they’d rescued and meet a retired legionnaire in the next town over who agrees to give them a ride as far as Fort Smith, Arkansas. 

Reyna curls up in the back and rests her head against the window, closing her eyes and avoiding conversation by pretending to sleep. 

Jason swallows past the lump in his throat and turns back in the passenger’s seat to face the front. 

The legionnaire chuckles quietly. He’s a big man in his thirties – a legacy of Mars, he’d said – and he hands Jason a stack of rock and alternative CDs to look through.

“Trouble in paradise?” the man asks.

“Something like that,” Jason lies, fumbling with the CDs until he manages to figure out how to use the stereo.

The car-shaking sound of a bass guitar blasts from the stereo, AC/DC drowning out any more attempts at conversation, but Jason doesn’t mind. He’s too wrapped up in his own thoughts, anyhow.

Liam was the only one who died on the quest, but Jason can’t help but feel as though he’s lost two friends.

oO0Oo

The Titans are growing bolder. The final battle is approaching.

More and more often, exceptions are being made.

Reyna is promoted to centurion after eighteen months in the legion, elected as praetor less than two years later.

She, like Jason, shouldn’t have even qualified for the position of centurion, let alone praetor, but war is on the horizon and they need strong leaders. 

They make an exception for her, for the fifteen-year-old daughter of Bellona with calculating eyes and a quiet aura of strength. They make an exception because these are unprecedented times and the resources of the legion are stretched thin enough as they are without trying to find a better alternative.

Still, Jason can’t help but wonder when exception becomes expectation. 

oO0Oo

Bacchus appears next to him when he’s scouting out Mount Othrys from afar.

In return for Jason’s aid, he promises to reveal the secrets of the Titans fortress.

Two days later, Jason returns the missing leopard to him in Sonoma with several deep scratches, a limp in his gait, and a new hatred for cats.

Bacchus hands him a rolled up scroll and pats him on the back, vanishing into thin air with a parting comment about organic snacks and low-key affairs being the new “it.”

Jason unrolls the scroll and stares down in disbelief at the writing. It’s in Latin, but a very, very old form of the language, like it was written down at the time of Aeneas and the kings of Latium. 

The markings identify weaknesses in the fortress’ defenses. The locations of traps and possible strategies are hastily scribbled onto the fragile parchment. 

Jason holds it in trembling hands, hardly daring to grip the delicate edges tightly lest it crumble into dust. 

It’s the plans Bacchus promised him, brought straight from the archives on Mount Olympus. 

But they are the plans of Mount Othrys from the first war. They had been made in a different time, in a different place, when immortals were the combatants on both sides of the war. 

Jason takes a deep breath and wonders if the gods are laughing at him.

oO0Oo 

Sometimes, Jason forgets he’s a child.

Teens his age should be going on their first dates, complaining about the fast food joints they work at, studying for their finals.

Instead, Jason is fifteen and preparing for war.

He tightens the straps on his greaves and stands up, locking his gaze with Gwen’s, and then quickly looks away. The woman is much older than him, about the age Thalia would be, if his fuzzy memories are to be trusted, and she looks at him and the other child soldiers around them with a deep sort of despair and sadness.

Normally, Gwen was the first to spin an optimistic outlook on things, to try to cheer them all up. 

But not now. 

Like Jason, she knows many will fall on the mountain today.

He flips IVLIVS in the air and catches a golden lance. He takes a deep breath and turns to face his cohort.

The faces are young, determined and fierce. They refuse to let the Titans encroach on their territory even further than they already have, will destroy Mount Orthrys at any costs, even their own lives.

It was drilled into them that it was a privilege to die in battle for the glory of the empire, but Jason doesn’t see how children fighting their parents’ war could be anything less than horrifying.

He can’t help but notice the average age is about fifteen. He’s pretty sure he’s fifteen, too, though he’s never known his birthday. He’s far past middle age for demigods, even when taking into account those who chose to remain in New Rome, and he knows that a clock is ticking in the background. He’s running out of time.

He wills his voice not to crack as he calls for the Fifth Cohort to line up and face the praetors marching across the ranks of the legion. It’s hard to swallow past the cold lump of fear in his throat.

Reyna, Jason’s best friend, was elected to the position only two months before at the Feast of Fortuna, when the previous praetor decided to retire and leave for the mortal world. He’d been told secretly that people expected him to be a candidate, but he refused to put his name on a ballot and have people elect him simply because he’s the son of Jupiter and that’s what’s expected of him.

Reyna marches through their encampment at the base of Mount Tam, her purple cloak fluttering in the breeze behind her. She’s also fifteen and had been at Camp less years than Jason has, but she’s a natural leader and there’s no one he’d rather follow into battle. The other praetor, Maxim Dupont, son of Liber, is twenty and strong-willed with an even stronger sword arm. Jason wouldn’t be surprised if Maxim challenged Krios to single combat and won.

“Romans!” Maxim bellows, and the entire legion comes to attention. The sounds of armour and weapons clacking together ripples from all five cohorts as the soldiers straighten and bring their weapons into parade rest. 

There’s almost three hundred legionnaires bedecked in armour at the base of the mountain, retired demigods and legacies bound by oath to return to active duty when the legion called on them. All those reserve troops are much older than Jason, many with grey hairs or lines creasing their skin and silver scars that betray their age. They seem out of place among the younger, fresh-faced campers who make up the regular force, but their grips are tight on their weapons and they watch the mountain with the sort of hyper-vigilance that never really goes away, even after a soldier has left the battlefield.

Jason wonders how many of the retired legionnaires have children or family waiting for them back home. He wonders how many will be fighting alongside their own children today. 

He wonders how many will die before the battle is over.

“We are the pride of Rome, the Twelfth Legion Fulminata!” Maxim paces up and down their lines, Reyna astride Scippio behind him. “Today, we fight for the glory of the Empire, for the honour of the gods! We will prove our might and make the Titans rue the day they thought they could stand against Rome! Ave!”

“Ave!” The voices of hundreds of legionnaires echo from the cohorts and it’s not quite the comforting sound Jason thought it would be. 

His voice cracks on the end of his Ave! and his palms are sweaty around the shaft of his pilum.

Jason is fifteen and leading children into war on behalf of gods he isn’t sure even care.

oO0Oo

He doesn’t remember much of the following battle. He supposes he repressed the memories to try to save his sanity. 

He remembers the screams of arrows cutting through the air and the clash of metal as swords and shields engaged each other. 

He remembers advancing behind the shield wall with his cohort, screaming orders at the top of his lungs.

Most of all, he remembers the horrifying sight of Maxim’s body as Krios’ sword lashes out and slices through skin and bone from shoulder to hip, and how the praetor froze for a millisecond before his body fell apart, crumpling to the ground in pieces.

After that, the battle is a blur.

When he comes to, he’s holding Krios’ helmet in his hands – his spoil of war – and there’s a deep gash along the inside of his thigh that steadily leaks blood into his jeans along with an arrow sticking out of his left arm, but he hardly feels anything as the adrenaline comes down and leaves him drained.

He doesn’t know how long he stares at the remains of the Titan lord before somebody throws him unceremoniously up onto a shield, and despite himself, despite the filth and the blood and the way he knows he’s going to break down the moment he’s alone, Jason grins and laughs with the legionnaires as they raise him to praetorship on the site of his greatest victory.

oO0Oo

Jason wonders if it ever strikes the veterans in the city odd that, more often than not, their lives are being dictated by children. He and Reyna are only fifteen and yet adults twice their age come up to them for advice and council. 

He supposes that those veterans had once been children leading armies themselves and don’t think anything of it. It’s just the way their society was built.

Most demigods don’t live to adulthood, after all.

But they were never really children to begin with.

oO0Oo

One day, the legionnaires on sentry duty escort a new demigod into camp.

There’s nothing strange about that; it’s something that happens nearly every week.

What is strange is the boy they’re escorting. He’s taken straight to the principia to meet with Jason and Reyna. 

The boy who stands before them is skinny and pale, with dark bags under his eyes and a silver skull ring on his left hand. His expression is serious and for all that he can’t be older than thirteen, he stands tall when faced with the praetors.

“I’m Nico di Angelo,” the boy says. “Ambassador of Pluto.”

oO0Oo

Hazel Levesque is strange… but not in a bad way. 

She speaks differently, her words carrying a different cadence than normal, and she’s wary around the other legionnaires. 

And she’s a daughter of Pluto. The first child of the god to join the legion in seventy years. 

Nico stands beside Jason and Reyna in front of the assembled legion, expression pinched and worried as he looks at Hazel, standing a few feet away. He’d brought Hazel to camp just that morning, claiming that his father sent him to find her in New Orleans and bring her here. 

Jason believes him. Sort of. 

He has no doubt that Hazel was from New Orleans, nor that Pluto had told Nico to bring her to camp, but he has his suspicions…

Regardless, it doesn’t matter. He judges people by their own merits and their present actions. Their pasts are of no concern to him; the legion is a blank slate, a place to start over.

And Hazel is powerful. The other cohorts might not want to admit it because of her parentage, but Jason can sense the magic that clings to her, the way the mist warps ever so slightly around her body. He can feel the vibrations in the air as the ground trembles beneath her feet and sends a shockwave throughout camp.

The others may think it’s a small earthquake – not uncommon in California – but Jason knows better. He’s a child of the Big Three as well, and he feels the pull of Hazel’s power like it’s kin to his own.

He’s praetor and he’s not supposed to show favouritism to any cohort or camper, but he nods subtly to Dakota, the young man who’d been promoted to centurion in his absence. Hazel would be a boon for the Fifth Cohort, he knows it.

Dakota dips his chin slightly in acknowledgement. A moment later, he’s stepping forward out of the mass of legionnaires and planting the butt of his pilum in the ground.

“I will stand for Hazel Levesque!”

Beside Jason, Nico lets out a quiet sigh of relief.

oO0Oo

Being praetor is a lot more work than Jason thought. 

He steps into his house and locks the door behind him, taking his shoes off as he absentmindedly runs through a mental list of all the things he has to get done by the end of the week. 

Check the quartermaster’s supplies. Organize support groups for the legionnaires who’d come out of the war traumatized. Review the list of Romans who’d mustered out and then rejoined for the final battle, compare them with those who’d stayed to defend the camp in case of emergencies, and assemble a referencing system of their ages and cohorts for a study the University of New Rome wants to do. 

Not to mention the most difficult task of all: figuring out how to transition the active legionnaires back into some semblance of normality when all they’ve been doing for the past few years is prepare for war.

It’s exhausting. 

Jason taps his fingers on the hall table in thought. He’s just debating putting his shoes back on and going next door to ask for Reyna’s advice when—

oO0Oo

Jason doesn’t remember how old he is when he wakes up on a bus heading to the Grand Canyon. 

He doesn’t remember anything . 

oO0Oo

He stands on a catwalk high above the Grand Canyon and can’t help but be impressed.

Birds circle far below and red and grey ravines cut through the desert like some crazy god had taken a knife to it .

He stumbles as pain blooms behind his eyes. He can’t help but feel like the synapses in his brain are firing into overdrive, trying desperately to conjure up memories that are no longer there.

He also gets the unmistakable feeling that he’s in danger.

oO0Oo

The idea that the Olympians still exist isn’t something that surprises Jason.

What does is the sudden and intense feeling of dread he gets when he sees the Big House at Camp Half-Blood for the first time.

The eagle weathervane swivels in the wind to point right at him, staring him down with its metal eyes, its expressionless face accuastory. 

Jason knows it, deep in his bones. He’s on enemy territory unwelcome here.

He meets Chiron and the centaur’s face drains of blood upon seeing him. 

“You… You should be dead.”

Somehow, that’s the only thing anyone’s said all day that feels right.

oO0Oo

He summons lightning at the campfire and the campers fall silent.

Something tells him it’s nothing new, that he’s used to people looking at him like that, but it makes him uncomfortable all the same.

And though he knows he should be preoccupied with the prophecy Rachel the Oracle issued for his quest, all he can think of are the lines of the Prophecy of Seven Great Prophecy that he and Rachel had spoken.

To storm or fire the world must fall

An oath to keep with a final breath

Somehow, those words scare him more than the fate implied at the end of his prophecy. 

The logs in the bonfire pop and crackle, and the noise reminds him of a clock ticking.

oO0Oo

In Québec, Boreas laughs as his form flickers into Aquilon, and Jason can’t help the cold knot of fear that unravels in his chest.

As terrifying as this god’s court is, as hopeless as their situation seems, just seeing the god’s Roman form settles something inside him.

Something he hadn’t realized was wrong before it was fixed.

oO0Oo

They crash land in an abandoned warehouse in Detroit and Jason can’t understand why the place makes him so uneasy.

He leads his friends into a trap again .

Later, Piper and Leo tell him about the son of Mercury the Cyclopes claimed to have captured, the one who wore a purple shirt and spoke Latin, and Jason’s eyes burn. Nausea curls in his gut, like his body is remembering the memories his mind can’t.

oO0Oo

“No, no, Jason Grace, aren’t you? It was — what — last year? You were on your way to fight a sea monster, I believe.”

That was wrong. It was more than two years ago that Jason had stood here, Kennedy and James at his side, as they sought Aeolus’ help in defeating the Trojan Sea Monster. The god had rejected them, but only after making them wait for days without any word.

His head aches and his mind burns. “I—I don’t remember.”

The god just laughs.

oO0Oo

IVLIVS explodes in his face on Mount Diablo, and he can’t help but think that it’s an omen.

oO0Oo

Jason steps over the cracked threshold of the Wolf House and—

Jason is fifteen when his stolen memories come rushing back.

He remembers Thalia and his mother, the last day they’d shared together in this very spot. He remembers Reyna and Gwen and all his other friends back at Camp Jupiter, the way the sunlight sparkled on the swift current of the Little Tiber. He remembers being a probatio, getting his tattoos, being promoted to Centurion and then being raised on a shield after a battle with another son of Gaea. 

The pain in his temples explodes and he stumbles as his mind is overwhelmed with the return of memories that should never have been taken away in the first place.

oO0Oo

And death unleashed through Hera’s rage.

Jason dies for the first time when he’s fifteen, a supernova burning behind his eyelids. 

Piper Charmspeaks him back to life and with the Doors chained, Thanatos can’t keep him. 

He cheats death and the clock continues to tick. 

oO0Oo

Even after the quest ends and he gets his memories back, Jason spends the first few games of Capture the Flag getting knocked on his podex. 

When he’s on his own, he’s fine, but when he’s expected to lead a team, his legion training kicks in and he keeps trying to command the demigods like they’re seasoned legionnaires rather than the solo fighters they tend to be.

“Medii partitis ad difalangiam!”

“Ad cuneum!”

“Eiaculare flammas!”

Every time he yells a command, the demigods nearest him shoot him strange looks and he’s once again hit with the fact that he’s no longer at Camp Jupiter and then—

WHAP! He’s hit with something else. The flat edge of someone’s blade. He winces, ribs bruising from the sword’s impact with his leather armour. 

But he adapts quickly and even incorporates some of their moves into his style. One can never have too many surprises in their arsenal, after all. 

oO0Oo

Once, Jason thinks he catches a glimpse of a familiar aviator jacket dissolving into shadow near the Big House, but he dismisses it as a trick of the light.

It isn’t until much later that he makes the connection between Nico di Angelo, Ambassador of Pluto, and the son of Hades that Annabeth told him about.

When he does, the twinge of betrayal that twists in his gut is both unexpected and unsurprising. 

oO0Oo

A few days before they’re to set sail on the Argo II, Thalia and the hunters arrive at Camp.

In the absence of Artemis, who was forced to go silent with the rest of the gods, Chiron and Thalia had decided that it would be best for the two groups to join forces in anticipation of whatever might come of this quest, whatever this war might bring.

It’s absolute chaos. From what Jason can understand, when the hunters do stop by Camp, it’s usually in the winter, when there’s less campers. But now, at the start of the summer season, there’s nearly a hundred kids from a variety of cabins as well as about two dozen hunters of Artemis. It puts everyone on edge and the tension between the two groups is almost tangible.

Thalia and the Head Counsellors have their work cut out for them, stopping fights from brewing or weapons from being drawn.

(He does notice that Thalia turns a blind eye when Phoebe, the huntress who’d made them hot chocolate on Pikes Peak, starts shooting arrows at one of the Stoll brothers.)

But on the eve of the Argo II’s departure, when the campers are all tucked into bed, stuffed full and exhausted from the goodbye dinner and sing-along, someone raps their knuckles on the door to Cabin 1.

Jason sits up in bed. “Uh, come in?”

The door opens, spilling a shaft of moonlight onto the marble floor, and Thalia steps in, her silver circlet shimmering in her black hair.

“Hey,” she says.

Jason swings his feet off his bed, quickly throwing a shirt on. “It’s late. I thought everyone had gone to bed.”

Thalia laughs quietly and wanders over to the alcove she’d once carved out of the alabaster walls of this cold mausoleum. She stares down at the faded pictures taped to the wall and the dusty bedroll Jason hadn’t had the heart to move. He’d kept them there for Thalia’s sake – and maybe to pretend like he wasn’t completely alone in this empty cabin.

“You’re welcome to stay here, if you want,” Jason says. “But I thought the hunters had their own cabin?”

Thalia continues staring at the pictures, the smile fading from her face. She studies the picture of herself as a child, grinning with a young Annabeth wedged on the seat of the photo booth between her and another young man about her age – Luke, he remembered Annabeth telling him.

Luke, who had betrayed the gods and died the previous summer, sacrificing himself to stop Kronos from achieving full power.

There’s such pain in Thalia’s eyes that Jason looks away without another word. He wonders if Annabeth hadn’t been the only one to love Luke, if Thalia hadn’t always planned for a life of maidenhood.

Thalia steps back and turns to him, wiping any trace of sadness from her face. “I couldn’t find the time to give this to you earlier, with all the last-minute preparations and all, but mostly everyone’s asleep and my hunters won’t say anything.”

Right. Because even though they’re siblings and both children of Zeus – technically Jupiter, in Jason’s case – Thalia had taken her vows and forsworn the company of men, so they weren’t supposed to be in the same cabin together after dark.

He wonders why the hunters are keeping their silence. Perhaps some of them had had younger siblings as well, family they’d lost over the eons. Perhaps their loyalty to Thalia ran so deep they wouldn’t ask questions.

“Here.” Thalia walks over to the bed and sits down on the rumpled sheets, withdrawing something from her pocket. It’s a small square, no bigger than his palm, half-hazardly wrapped in blue paper. “Happy birthday.”

Jason stares at the box she holds out to him. “What?”

Her smile falters. “It’s nothing much, but you’re going to be gone for your actual birthday and—”

“Not that,” Jason interrupts. “My birthday’s coming up?”

The box tumbles from her grip onto the bed. “You didn’t know?”

Jason shakes his head, mind spinning. “No. I came to Camp Jupiter when I was three and didn’t remember. We didn’t really celebrate birthdays there, either. When, uh—” he licks his dry lips. “When is it?”

Thalia watches him with sad blue eyes, infinitely older than they should be. “July 1st,” she says quietly.

July 1st. The Kalends of July. The first day of Juno’s sacred month.

The irony makes a laugh bubble from his lips.

“What?” Thalia asks.

“It’s nothing.” Jason grins and picks up the present. Gingerly, he pulls off the wrapping paper with trembling hands. He’s never had a present like this before, not that he can remember, anyways. They’d chosen the day he joined the legion as a sort of ‘milestone’ day, and he usually received a pat on the back and his friends had taken him into New Rome for hot chocolate, but no one has ever given him a gift. Not like this.

The paper falls away to reveal a small wooden picture frame with a stand on the back, so it could be propped up on a desk or a table. Behind the glass is an old polaroid picture of two kids, smiling at whoever was behind the camera, and despite the weathering on the picture that tells him it was a treasure well loved, Jason recognizes him and Thalia instantly.

They look so different, so young and carefree. They’re both wearing striped party hats and have cake and frosting smeared on their faces and shirts. Jason has a bandaid over his lip – clearly the infamous stapler incident – and Thalia’s hair is longer than he’s ever seen it, brushing her collarbones. Jason has one hand up, reaching for the camera with sticky fingers, and Thalia is holding him with the backdrop of a kitchen behind them. They’re both grinning and even from the picture, Jason can see the love and tenderness his sister holds him with.

“This was taken on your second birthday, a few months before—” she pauses. “One of the last times I ever looked like that at our mother. You were gone and it was like all the light in my life was extinguished. I ran away before your third birthday, but I kept the picture all these years. I’m surprised that nothing happened to it while I was a tree, actually.”

“Thalia… I don’t know what to say.” It’s true. He’s utterly speechless.

“‘Thank you’ is usually the appropriate expression of gratitude,” Thalia says with another small grin.

He can’t help but try to compare the smile Thalia wears in the photo to the one she has on now. They’re different. Thalia’s face is stiffer, like she no longer smiles so carefreely, like there had been very little to smile about in the past few years. She doesn’t have the same innocence in the look, either—aged before her time.

“But this is your picture, I—I can’t take this from you.”

“It’s a gift,” Thalia says gently, and holds her arms out. “Happy birthday, little brother.”

Jason folds himself into her arms, and though he’s half a head taller and they appear the same age, he takes another look at the picture and wonders if this was how he’d felt back then.

Loved. Warm. Protected. Safe.

oO0Oo

Jason stands on the deck of the Argo II, wearing an orange Camp Half-Blood shirt and the toga of a praetor, staring down at the valley and the ruins that tell of the battle the legion had fought. 

The battle he hadn’t been there to lead them in.

He sees a dark haired boy with his arms around Hazel and a Chinese kid he doesn’t know, and realizes with a jolt that the boy – who had to be Percy Jackson, Annabeth’s boyfriend – is wearing the insignia of a praetor as well.

Even though he’s been gone for six months and has been thinking about the camps, about things he doesn’t dare voice or admit to himself, seeing the Romans replace him so easily is…

He clamps down on the surge of bitterness and jealousy that rises within him.

A cold chill runs down his spine and he feels eyes on his back. He turns and sees Piper, practicing her Charmspeak by the mast. She catches his gaze and smiles at him, her eyes sparkling and shifting colours in the midday sun.

Her smile thaws some of that chill that seemed to have seeped into his bones, but when he returns to staring down at Camp Jupiter, he can’t help the dread that weighs his shoulders down. 

oO0Oo

The Argo II sails out of Charleston Harbour, leaving the United States and the legion behind.

It’s only when they’re in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean that he and Percy let the storm die down and finally slump against the mast, exhausted. Jason’s fingers press into the wood grain of the deck below him as he fights to keep his nausea and vertigo under control. Too much power — they’d used too much power too quickly.

But now that they’ve stopped, in the middle of nowhere with no immediate threats, it gives him time to finally digest everything that has happened over the past few days.

The Romans had tried to kill him. His legionnaires had tried to kill him.

His chest tightens. Even before they’d fled the States, even before fighting had erupted in Charleston and the new Civil War had begun, from the moment Jason had sided with the crew of the Argo II in the forum, he’d become a traitor in their eyes. If it hadn't been for Piper’s Charmspeak and quick thinking, he might actually have died there.

But now he was in the Atlantic, crossing to the Ancient Lands. Sailing to a place where Roman demigods had been forbidden for generations. The moment he’d done so, he’d forfeited his rank and his position in the legion. By law, any Roman demigod that caught them now was fully within their right – expected, even – to drag them back before a tribunal, where they would undoubtedly be executed.

Dura lex, sed lex. The law is harsh, but it is the law.

Even if he managed to return from this quest, even if he managed to survive the terrible things the prophecy foretold, the punishment for treason and desertion was death. Reyna might be inclined to bend the rules for them, but not Octavian. He’d want an example made of them.

He couldn’t go home. There was nothing left for him there anymore.

oO0Oo

If you’re Jupiter’s son, you might understand. It’s a lot of pressure. Enough is never enough. Eventually, it can make a guy snap.

Hercules might have been a jerk, but lying in his bed on the Argo II, staring at the lantern projecting constellations around his cabin, Jason wonders if he was right.

The gods do not care for fallen heroes. They don’t care if they push and push the demigods until they break. 

When Jason’s time comes, will they care for him?

oO0Oo

The day Jason turns sixteen is the day two of his friends fall into the eternal pit of Hell.

The low groan of the floor giving way spurs them all into action, Jason and Frank flying to harness the Athena Parthenos as Annabeth yells at them to save it, to not let the statue disappear again. High above, the rumble of falling stones and the howl of the wind in his ears blocks out all other noise.

It isn’t until they get the statue secured and there’s a brief, horrible moment of silence that Jason realizes what had happened.

Percy and Annabeth are nowhere to be found. Nico is kneeling at the edge of the chasm that had sucked Arachne in, Hazel’s arms wrapped around his shoulders.

They’re both crying.

“The cavern’s going to go!” Leo screams from the deck of the Argo II. “Get on the ship! Get on the ship!”

Stone shifts again, more Italian sports cars rolling over the edge of the sinkhole and into the darkness below. He knows Leo’s right, even as he hates himself for it. But he runs to the ship, propelling himself through the sky with the winds until he safely drops beside the mast.

“Percy and Annabeth—” he gasps. 

“I know.” Piper’s eyes are also shining with tears and Leo’s face is bone white. “Gods, Jason, I know. But we can’t stay here. We’re of no use if we fall, too.”

“But we have to go back for them,” he protests, even as the whole cavern shudders and Piper buries her face in his chest and he brings his arms around her out of reflex. “We have to go back for them,” he whispers.

The Argo II’s mooring lines snap and they’re airborne, flying from the sinkhole just as it gives one last almighty groan, sports cars and cement imploding in the middle of a busy Roman street.

He can only stare in horror as the cavern collapses behind them, burying Arachne’s lair and any chance they might have had to save Percy and Annabeth. 

It’s not his best birthday ever.

oO0Oo

The cobblestones of Cupid’s palace are cold beneath his feet.

The myths and histories are full of tales of men loving men, women loving women, people who loved both and those who loved neither. 

To Jason, the people Nico’s attracted to doesn’t matter, regardless of what he identifies as or what label he attaches to it. Nico is his friend and a demigod Jason swore to protect when he took the praetor’s oath, and so the realization that Nico hadn’t been attracted to Annabeth but rather jealous of her changes nothing beyond allowing a few things to make sense.

But now, he can’t help but feel a white hot bolt of anger surge through him, as powerful as any lighting, at the thought of Cupid forcing Nico to come out before he was ready, to admit the crush he’d had on Percy and the shame he carried with him, in such a humiliating way. If Nico wasn’t so prickly and touch-adverse, Jason would have scooped him up in a bear hug and shielded him from the cruel god of love.

It has never been more clear to him than in that moment that to the gods, nothing is sacred. Nothing is private. There is no part about their lives that the gods will not hesitate to twist and manipulate and exploit for their own gain.

And it infuriates him.

oO0Oo

You are a son of Jupiter, yet you have chosen your own path, as all the greatest demigods have done before you. You cannot control your parentage, but you can choose your legacy.

Even as Jason throws his lot in with Camp Half-Blood, chooses Notus, chooses Greek – he vows that the legacy he will leave behind will be one of both camps.

He is more than a son of Jupiter, more than an officer of Rome. He refuses to turn out like Hercules, bitter and consumed with self-pity. He won’t be like Bacchus either, running away from his problems at the bottom of a bottle of wine. He won’t encourage the placation of his people through panem et circenses, like the emperors of old.

He is Jason Grace, and as he lashes ropes of wind around the burning venti, he vows that he will forge his own legacy – with or without the blessing of the gods.  

The clock begins to tick louder.

oO0Oo

Jason is sixteen years and eighteen days old when they reach the Doors of Death and rescue Percy and Annabeth.

They’d been wandering through Tartarus for nearly three weeks. They’re hardly more than skin and bones, sunken eyes and hollow cheeks that betray only a hint of the agony they must have gone through down there. Their clothes are made from some strange leather, the orange Camp shirts underneath hardly more than tatters, blood from their wounds cutting through the filth and grime on their skin.

And Annabeth has a sword. Since when did she have a sword? And why was it made of bone?  

But they defeat Clytius with Hecate’s help and then they’re suddenly above the House of Hades, back in the mortal world once again. Jason has no idea how long they’ve been in the darkness of the forgotten temple, but the sunlight stings his skin and half-blinds him. He can only imagine what it’s like for Percy and Annabeth after so long in the endless pit.

He tilts his head back and breathes in the fresh air, smells the salt from the Aegean, and lets the sun warm the chill that had crept into his bones. Wind rustles his hair, his father’s domain caressing his face, cooing with relief that he had come back to them, that he has returned safe and whole.

They were alive. They were all alive.

It’s more than he could have ever hoped for.

oO0Oo

Born a Roman, die a Roman. Michael Varus’ words hiss through his mind like the wisps of smoke that curl from his wound.

He’d been stabbed in the back by a praetor, by an officer of Rome. 

He can’t help but see it as the betrayal it is. Rome has forsaken him. He isn’t sure he’ll be welcome back at Camp Jupiter if when they return.

But is he truly Roman any more?

Since resigning his post and giving Frank a field promotion to praetor, he’s felt… lighter, somehow. He’d been raised in the legion since he was a toddler. All his life, he was told that he was destined to be praetor, to lead them. It was an unspoken fact people had agreed upon the moment he’d been claimed by Jupiter.

Nobody had ever bothered to ask Jason what he wanted.

But now, sitting at the table awkwardly as Piper changes the bandages wrapped around his gut, he isn’t sure if he knows what that is. If he knows how he wants to live the rest of his life.

I’m a child of Greece and Rome! I’m no child of yours.  

That’s what Jason had told his mother’s mania, but could that ever be true? Gods don’t have blood, they have ichor, and so his DNA, the part that makes him human, is all her. The insane woman who’d abandoned him in Sonoma when he was a kid, who’d allowed Thalia to run away from home when she was still so young, who’d grown unstable and killed herself in a car accident years later.

With that knowledge burdening him, with that history written into his bones, how could he be anything but doomed?

oO0Oo

Kymopoleia calls him “Pontifex” and the title settles rightly in his bones. The wound in his gut doesn’t burn anymore.

For the first time in his life he feels… at ease. 

Like he finally knows where he belongs.

This is what he’s meant for, honouring the gods of both pantheons, fixing his father’s mistakes and ensuring the sins of the past are never repeated. Greek or Roman, god or mortal, everyone deserves to be respected, to have their voice heard.

And Jason swears he will not fail them.

oO0Oo

“In front of the assembled council of the gods, you dare call me unwise?” Zeus asks quietly, voice deceptively calm but no less dangerous. 

Jason shifts uneasily on his feet. 

He doesn’t know it, but he’s just made his fatal mistake. The clock ticks, approaching the final countdown. 

oO0Oo

Jason thinks of the stories of Achilles and Patroclus, of Romulus and Remus, of Aeneas and Cadmus and Horatius. He thinks of Hilde and Maxim, of Michael Varus and the doomed Alaskan expedition, of Thalia and Liam and all the fallen demigods on Mount Othrys and Half-Blood Hill. 

He thinks of the destinies of heroes and how they always end in death. 

The Greeks invented tragedy, after all, and the Romans perfected it. 

oO0Oo

Piper breaks up with him a few months after the end of the Giant War. She says it’s because of her, not him.

“I need to take a step back and focus on myself, on finding who I am without the gods orchestrating every moment. Our relationship was built on a lie, on months that never really existed, and I need to put myself first,” she explains. She keeps her eyes trained on the horizon and fiddles with the harpy feather braided into her hair. 

“I want to learn more about my heritage, about what it means to be Cherokee,” she says quietly, “and I don’t know if I can do that if I’m trying to live in a world of Greek and Roman gods, too.”

She turns to him finally and her eyes are red rimmed but steady. “I love you, Jason, but I need a break.”

He swallows past the lump in his throat. He understands. He really does.

Hesitantly, unsure if Piper will allow it, he leans forward and kisses her forehead. His lips linger on her skin and she leans into the touch ever so slightly, like they both understand this goodbye is more final than either of them want. 

“It’s okay,” he says and draws back, giving her a sad smile. “You don’t have to explain anything to me.”

He knows what it’s like to live with the expectations of the gods weighing down your shoulders.

oO0Oo

Jason is sixteen when he joins Apollo on his quest and knows in his heart he won’t make it to see the end.

He remembers Annabeth’s words. The thing about prophecies… The more you know, the more you try to change them. And that can be disastrous.

It’s not just the prophecy he received from Herophile, though that’s a part of it. Mostly, it’s the sinking gut feeling that tells him Leo cheated the Prophecy of Seven, that he didn’t really die like he was meant to, and the Fates will be looking to take another life in his stead. 

Or maybe this was always how it was meant to be: storm or fire. One of them had to die saving the world. Evidently, the fire rekindled itself so its storm that must pay the price.

He thinks of the oath Jupiter made to not have any more children and how he was born cursed because of that.

Promise me one thing. Whatever happens, when you get back to Olympus, when you’re a god again, remember. Remember what it’s like to be human.

There’s the weight of hundreds of lives bearing down heavily on his shoulders and a clock ticking silently in the background. He’d never expected to live long, anyways.

oO0Oo

Though the angry roar of Medea’s wind cage drowns out everything else, one thought slips to the forefront of his mind. 

If you are to die, it will be by her hand.

Juno had told him that, so many months ago. On a different quest, to rescue a different god. 

Sometimes, it feels like it was a different lifetime, too. 

oO0Oo

Jason is sixteen when Caligula’s spear rips through muscle and sinew and protrudes out his chest.

He gasps wetly, eyes wide with pain and shock, red pooling rapidly on his school uniform. Distantly, he can hear Piper screaming and Apollo yelling defiance, but it doesn’t really matter now, does it?

The prophecy came true. Storm or fire. An oath to keep with a final breath.

He collapses over Tempest’s back and barely manages to whisper a plea to keep Piper and Apollo safe before his arms give out and he topples to the deck, hitting the floor face down without the strength to move.

The spear is still sticking out of his back. He can feel it there like a dull throb of pain that loses intensity with every passing moment. It hurts to breathe, pain rippling through his chest with every small movement. But his legs have gone numb and his fingers are rapidly losing feeling as well.

I’m dying.

The thought hits him just as Caligula tugs his spear from his back, the pain beginning anew as blood spills from the wound, the Imperial gold weapon ripping through his skin once again. 

Demigods never lived long lives, even in New Rome, but a part of him had been hoping against hope this whole time that he might be one of the lucky few. That the gods might deign to let him grow old.

He thinks of the vision he had in Athens, when he saw the gods barrelling down on them, and wished he could have had a chance to have grandchildren.

That thought stirs another vague one in his mind – and it’s getting harder now to push through the fog in his head – and he concentrates hard as the surface beneath him grows slippery with his blood.

The gods. Saving them. Dying.

Jupiter could save him. He’d done it once before, as Zeus, to save Thalia when she was dying.

He turns his face to the sky as much as he can manage, screwing his eyes shut in one last desperate prayer.

But nothing happens. Blood still leaks from his wound. The flow is slowing now and his thoughts are becoming sluggish. Jason wonders if this is what it feels like to bleed out. To have your heart struggle to keep a steady rhythm.

Help isn’t coming. He has to make his peace with that.

Jason never really thought of Jupiter as apathetic. Vengeful? Sure. Wrathful? Definitely. But apathetic? It just doesn’t seem to fit the image of the god of justice.

He knows he only has heartbeats left, only a few moments clinging to life, but still Jupiter does nothing. 

He hardly feels the impact of Caligula’s second strike. His body is mostly numb now. But he hears Piper howling and senses the vibrations as the spear plants itself solidly in the wooden deck.

His eyes flutter shut and he forces them back open. His vision swims. It’s getting harder to stay conscious, to remember who he was and why he was there.

Apollo had made a mistake and Jupiter had stripped him of his immortality, sent him to the mortal world to die without lifting a finger when he was in trouble. Had allowed Apollo to attempt suicide in a final, desperate attempt to stop a psychotic emperor from taking his divinity.

Jason spoke out against him in front of the assembled gods in Athens and destroyed any good will his father might have held for him. He’d pointed out the flaws in Jupiter’s rule, how the gods’ ignorance had nearly led to their downfall.

If there’s one thing his life has taught him, it’s that pride and power are a dangerous combination.

He’s sure Jupiter is watching, probably in the council of the gods, observing their quest with an idle eye. He knows that someone out there is watching him die, but none of them send a miracle. They can’t disobey the king of the gods. Not even for a Hero of Olympus.

Hero of Olympus. The title tastes bitter in his mouth. What is the point in being a Hero of Olympus if the gods forget you the moment you cease to be useful?

The wind blows against his face, whipping his bloody hair around his eyes, but it doesn’t bother Jason. He can hardly feel it, anyways. He vaguely feels his sweat and blood-damp shirt cling to the smokey form of Tempest. His loyal steed, taking him away from the horrors of the bloody deck of the Julia Drusilla XII, bringing his master to safety one last time.

Distantly, he can hear Piper screaming his name with renewed horror and feels the dull sting of saltwater on his open wounds, but his consciousness is tied to his body by a loose tether. Any moment now, it feels like that tether will unravel and he’ll just… float away.

It’s not a bad way to die. His face relaxes as the tension of the day and a lifetime of pain bleeds away.

The sky is overcast, storm clouds gathering at the edges of his fading vision.

He thinks of his earliest memory, of his mother telling him that thunderstorms were his father’s way of telling him he was loved.

He thinks of how his life began when he was abandoned by his mother. Now it will end, abandoned by his father.

Jason ponders that painful irony as sea spray crashes over his face and the sky begins to open.

He’s still staring at the sky when his world fades to darkness. He doesn’t feel the first droplets of rain slide down his face like tears. 

oO0Oo

He steps from Charon’s boat onto a grey stone beach in the Underworld.

For the first time, the world is completely, utterly quiet. His heart no longer beats. The clock that had been ticking in the background since his birth has fallen silent.

The judges stare down at him, golden masks frozen and unmoving. He has no idea who is behind the masks, nor which one of them speaks at any given time. He remembers hearing once that it had been decreed long ago that the judges were all to be sons of Zeus, a way for his father to keep a hand of control over the domain of another god. Now he stands before them, waiting for his fallen brothers to decide his fate.

Then Pluto steps out of the shadows behind the judges and leans down to speak softly into the ear of the one on the right. He speaks too softly for Jason to hear him, but the ghosts suddenly vanish and Pluto steps down from the dais and approaches him. He glances behind him, but the line of spirits waiting to be judged has also vanished, their grey robes making no sound on the rocks as they disappeared.

“Son of Jupiter,” Pluto says. His voice is low and silky, like the sweet beckoning of death. “I never expected to see you so soon.”

Jason bows. His chest twinges with pain, but when he looks down, there’s no wound. There’s not even a tear in the fabric of his shirt. Instead of the filthy, blood-stained uniform he’d died in or the grey hooded robes he’d worn on Charon’s boat, he’s dressed comfortably in a clean pair of jeans and a purple shirt, like he’d never left the legion.

His tattoo stands out starkly against the paleness of his ghostly arm and there’s a Camp Half Blood necklace around his neck, bearing one bead: white with a golden pegasus surrounded by a golden laurel. The two aspects of the gods, joined as one. A reminder of everything that both camps went through, a reminder of who they were.

And for Jason, a reminder of why he’d died.

“Lord Pluto,” he says as he straightens. “I never expected to die so soon.”

The god’s stony expression doesn’t change, even as he hums quietly. “What the Fates have spun cannot be changed, pontifex. You already cheated death once.”

Jason winces, remembering the searing light behind his eyelids and the feeling of every molecule in his body burning up in a supernova. 

Pluto watches him for another moment, long enough that Jason has to resist the urge to fidget under the powerful gaze. At last he says, “Come, Jason Grace, Hero of Olympus. You have been Judged and deemed worthy.”

He doesn’t deserve that title. He’d sworn an oath to Kympolopeia that he’d make sure the minor gods were recognized, but look at where that got him: dead, without anyone to take up his mantle.

An oath to keep with a final breath.

The irony tastes like ash in his mouth.

Pluto leads him through the Underworld, past the silent whispers of Asphodel and the screams of the Fields of Punishment, past an underground river and a beautiful garden of jewels. Jason wonders if this is what Nico sees every time he returns here, if the beauty and the horror of the endless cavern blend together in a symphony for only the son of Hades to hear.

At last they stop by towering walls of alabaster and gold, the first spots of bright colour he’s seen since arriving in the Underworld, and it almost blinds him to look at it. 

“Elysium,” Jason breathes.

“It’s merely what you deserve. You are a Hero of Olympus. You’ve saved both my children many times. Fast-tracking your application was the least I could do.”

Jason turns and bows again. “Thank you, Lord Pluto.”

Pluto nods, grim-faced. “I’m sure you await your friends. I have no doubt they will join you soon.”

“Not too soon, hopefully,” Jason says, but Pluto merely frowns.

“Death is inevitable, child, as is destiny. No one can escape the Fates.”

A ripple of shadows and Pluto vanishes into the darkness, much like Nico always did, leaving Jason alone at the massive bronze gates. He steps closer to study them, a few of the security skeletons on guard duty stirring to watch him, but none move to block his path or suggest that he shouldn’t be here. 

The gates are carved with scenes from the dawn of time, of the gods and heroes vanquishing Titans and Giants, but other, newer scenes as well. Tilting his head up to see the decorations better, he makes out the carved figures of two men on the fields of Troy, a young woman in chainmail riding into battle with a flag streaming behind her, an older man speaking before a crowd.

He knows these carvings – at least, who they were. Achilles and Patroclus, Joan of Arc, Martin Luther King Jr., and so many more. So many he would be hard pressed to count them. All of them depicting the greatest achievements of the heroes who now reside behind these gilded walls. 

He wonders if he’s there, if any of the Seven are or will be. If the things they’d accomplished in their too-short lives would be immortalized in these gates for generations of fallen heroes to gaze upon, long after their stories have faded from the minds of mortals. 

The weight of the bead on his necklace is comforting and the tattoos on his arm are warm, a shadow of the heat he’d felt when they were branded on him. It’s a spot of warmth, of comfort, of home, in this otherworldly place. They’re proof that he’d lived, that he’d existed. That he hadn’t just been a pawn of the gods, fated to die at the ending of an unhappy story.

As he passes through the gates, he tilts his head up to the sky – or what passes for one in the Underworld. The stretch twinges the spot where the spear had run him through.

Jason Grace was sixteen when he died, sixteen when his life was cut short by an emperor who made himself a god, but that’s alright. 

Now he has all the time in the world.