The Mark of Athena

She smiled. “Come on.”

They worked their way past the supply rooms and the armory. Toward the stern of the ship, they reached a set of wooden double doors that opened into a large stable. The room smelled of fresh hay and wool blankets. Lining the left wall were three empty horse stalls like the ones they used for pegasi back at camp. The right wall had two empty cages big enough for large zoo animals.

In the center of the floor was a twenty-foot-square see-through panel. Far below, the night landscape whisked by—miles of dark countryside crisscrossed with illuminated highways like the strands of a web.

“A glass-bottomed boat?” Percy asked.

Annabeth grabbed a blanket from the nearest stable gate and spread it across part of the glass floor. “Sit with me.”

They relaxed on the blanket as if they were having a picnic, and watched the world go by below.

“Leo built the stables so pegasi could come and go easily,” Annabeth said. “Only he didn’t realize that pegasi prefer to roam free, so the stables are always empty.”

Percy wondered where Blackjack was—roaming the skies somewhere, hopefully following their progress. Percy’s head still throbbed from getting whopped by Blackjack’s hoof, but he didn’t hold that against the horse.

“What do you mean, come and go easily?” he asked. “Wouldn’t a pegasus have to make it down two flights of stairs?”

Annabeth rapped her knuckles on the glass. “These are bay doors, like on a bomber.”

Percy gulped. “You mean we’re sitting on doors? What if they opened?”

“I suppose we’d fall to our deaths. But they won’t open. Most likely.”

“Great.”

Annabeth laughed. “You know why I like it here? It’s not just the view. What does this place remind you of?”

Percy looked around: the cages and stables, the Celestial bronze lamp hanging from the beam, the smell of hay, and of course Annabeth sitting close to him, her face ghostly and beautiful in the soft amber light.

“That zoo truck,” Percy decided. “The one we took to Las Vegas.”

Her smile told him he’d gotten the answer right.

“That was so long ago,” Percy said. “We were in bad shape, struggling to get across the country to find that stupid lightning bolt, trapped in a truck with a bunch of mistreated animals. How can you be nostalgic for that?”

“Because, Seaweed Brain, it’s the first time we really talked, you and me. I told you about my family, and…” She took out her camp necklace, strung with her dad’s college ring and a colorful clay bead for each year at Camp Half-Blood. Now there was something else on the leather cord: a red coral pendant Percy had given her when they had started dating. He’d brought it from his father’s palace at the bottom of the sea.

“And,” Annabeth continued, “it reminds me how long we’ve known each other. We were twelve, Percy. Can you believe that?”

“No,” he admitted. “So…you knew you liked me from that moment?”

She smirked. “I hated you at first. You annoyed me. Then I tolerated you for a few years. Then—”

“Okay, fine.”

She leaned over and kissed him: a good, proper kiss without anyone watching—no Romans anywhere, no screaming satyr chaperones.

She pulled away. “I missed you, Percy.”

Percy wanted to tell her the same thing, but it seemed too small a comment. While he had been on the Roman side, he’d kept himself alive almost solely by thinking of Annabeth. I missed you didn’t really cover that.

He remembered earlier in the night, when Piper had forced the eidolon to leave his mind. Percy hadn’t been aware of its presence until she had used her charmspeak. After the eidolon was gone, he felt as if a hot spike had been removed from his forehead. He hadn’t realized how much pain he had been in until the spirit left. Then his thoughts became clearer. His soul settled comfortably back into his body.

Sitting here with Annabeth made him feel the same way. The past few months could have been one of his strange dreams. The events at Camp Jupiter seemed as fuzzy and unreal as that fight with Jason, when they had both been controlled by the eidolons.

Yet he didn’t regret the time he’d spent at Camp Jupiter. It had opened his eyes in a lot of ways.

“Annabeth,” he said hesitantly, “in New Rome, demigods can live their whole lives in peace.”

Her expression turned guarded. “Reyna explained it to me. But, Percy, you belong at Camp Half-Blood. That other life—”

“I know,” Percy said. “But while I was there, I saw so many demigods living without fear: kids going to college, couples getting married and raising families. There’s nothing like that at Camp Half-Blood. I kept thinking about you and me…and maybe someday when this war with the giants is over…”

It was hard to tell in the golden light, but he thought Annabeth was blushing. “Oh,” she said.

Percy was afraid he’d said too much. Maybe he’d scared her with his big dreams of the future. She was usually the one with the plans. Percy cursed himself silently.

As long as he’d known Annabeth, he still felt like he understood so little about her. Even after they’d been dating several months, their relationship had always felt new and delicate, like a glass sculpture. He was terrified of doing something wrong and breaking it.