Snip.
Luke has never seen the Fates, let alone heard the sounds of their shiny scissors snipping yarn, but he's heard enough stories to imagine. He pictures it now, in his head. Snip. Snip. Shiny and neat and perfect – a finite, beautiful thing. He's not taking lives with this, no – he's never been wasteful. It's a far more literal ritual than that – he's cutting ties.
Snip.
One cut for Camp Half-Blood, one cut for his siblings, one for the gods and a particularly savage one for his father. One cut for Percy Jackson and his righteous cause, one for…
He freezes.
One for the girl with bright blue eyes, dark choppy hair and a long line of sarcastic retorts; one for the little kid with grimy blonde hair and determined grey eyes.
No. He can't do it. He can't cu the ties which bind him to them.
Do it, clamour the voices in his head. Weak. Stupid. Pitiful.
"Shut up!' he screams, and in his head, the scissors are brandished at invisible foes. "Leave…"
But they are no longer invisible – their faces press forwards, beautiful and deadly and all-too-familiar; the faces of the two people who were once his best friends, his family.
"Not anymore," he whispers, in an attempt to calm himself. "Not anymore…"
Not a proper servant of Lord Kronos, the voices chide.
No, he thinks, he's not. The voices have got one thing right – he's always been shit with authority figures.
Snip, snip. Snip. He blindly lashes out, destroying the intricate web of strings holding him – barely – connected to his past. And then there are two that are left, for – for Thalia, and for Annabeth.
Do it, the voices hiss eagerly. Prove your loyalty.
He raises the scissors, half in a trance. He could do it. He owes no one but himself anything… except that all the ties have been cut. It's a free game, now – a blank sheet of paper where previously there was no visible white left. And the rulebooks are gone.
"Why am I doing this?"
It slips, unbidden, from his throat, from which he had thought words could no longer rise.
To prove yourself, the voices repeat, incensed as if some switch has been flipped. To serve Kronos.
No, he never has been good with authority figures.
"What if I don't want to?" he says, his voice wavering still but stronger, just a little stronger.
The voices seethe in disbelief, as if coiling to strike in a synchronised, deadly move. Traitor. Traitor.
"Maybe I am," he goes on. "But you're in my head. There's no one you can tell."
They flicker like a candle which has been caught in a sudden draught of wind, intent thrown. For a moment, all he can feel is overwhelming anger – he grits his teeth, hunched over, hands clutched desperately to his temples as if trying to push the voices from his head.
But they lurk in his heart.
So do Thalia and Annabeth.
The tight knot of anger writhing inside him bursts, and then the voices are gone. For now, of course, He can still feel their malevolent, angered presence, like a scab that needs to be itched, but he ignores it. He's got quite good at that.
He conjures up an image of those two remaining strings, connecting him to his old friends, glowing brightly in the darkness where the other, dimmer ones once were. Not much, for sure, but they are all he has, and maybe that is enough for him to cling to, a lifeline to his crumbling sanity.
He could search for Thalia, but she has joined the Hunt, gone where he can't find her without notice, and anyway, after nearly killing him he doubts she would listen.
For good reason, he supposes.
He could search for Annabeth. She's always been reliably logical – too much so for her own good. She would at least hear him out, and he knows where she is, at least – San Francisco.
She'll probably kill him, anyway, but that might not be so bad.
Annabeth. Yeah, he'll find Annabeth.
Luke Castellan pushes back his chair, exiting even as it scrapes across the marble floor, a weak protest against his will. He strides down a little-used corridor on the Princess Andromeda, clawed and scratched floorboards creaking a little under his weight, and reaches the deck after climbing a couple of flights of stairs.
There's a grain of hope at last, ignited in his chest, soaring as the darkness sinks away beneath it – to hell if he's headed towards a fate worse than death. Annabeth will help him, he knows she will.
He's rarely wrong, but when he is, it's usually catastrophic.