"Are you okay?" she whispers.
"Yes," he squeezes her hand and she raises her eyebrows.
"You sure?"
"Yeah. Yeah Lace, I'm fine."
/
Piper moves aside the comforters she's covered herself with and reaches out to move the hair away from her face. "Lacy, can you—" she falters, "can you tell me what's wrong?"
Everybody else is outside mourning those lost in the Titan War and celebrating the second victory over Kronos. Lacy is a shuddering, sobbing mess, buried in her bed. It takes a few minutes for her to speak through tears. "He—he's dead."
Piper says nothing. She simply climbs into the covers, hugging her sister and offering silent apologies.
/
"Ethan!" she shrieks as he comes up behind her and throws her over his back.
"I think you should take a nice swim in the lake," he smiles mischievously.
"No—oh my gods—Ethan!" he dumps her into the body of water. She rises after a few seconds, some kind of plant in her hair.
They stare at each other for a few moments, until she reaches for his ankle and pulls him in with her.
/
She finds Silena and the bracelet on her wrist in the beginning of that fateful summer. Her older sister looks like she doesn't know what to do when Lacy accuses her of spying.
"You're right," she sighs. "I guess I can't stop you from telling anyone."
She doesn't tell anyone, because that night Silena finds the pictures of her and Ethan under her pillow and cries with her and she realizes that all her sister is doing is protecting the person she loves.
"I wish I could save you," she says to the boy in all the pictures, frozen in time.
/
"Come back," is all she says.
"I can't make any promises," he replies.
/
The camp bead has his name on it. It's very small, so small she can barely see it, but it's there, and that means the world to her.
/
"One day in Elysium, I'll find you. I'll always find you," she whispers to his shroud. It goes up in flames, and she turns around and leaves.