The Ties That Bind

Chapter 8: Twist of Fate

For I have made her prison be
Her every step away from me
And this child, I would destroy
If you try to set her free

- My Medea (Vienna Teng)

Chiron listened to everything I had to say, his eyes dark and his mouth tugging down a little more with each word I said. I felt more and more awful over having kept this from him as I went on, and somewhere around when I started describing the way Nico had been acting after the war council yesterday I realized just how wrong I had been to not tell him sooner. The look on Chiron's face was making it clear that this was serious. I thought about the way Thalia had looked earlier, when she'd said something was really wrong with Nico, and my stomach just continued to sink as I kept talking until finally I was done.

There was a long moment of silence after I'd finished. Neither Chiron nor I moved, until finally Chiron said, "You should have come to me a long time ago." He didn't sound accusing, just... disappointed. It was almost worse than if he'd been mad.

"I know," I said, staring at the fancy lamp standing in the window so I wouldn't have to look at his face anymore. Suddenly all of my reasons for not telling him sounded awfully lame in my head. "But I thought... Nico didn't want me to tell anyone, and Michael didn't seem all that worried, and... I... I mean..."

"You thought you could take care of it yourself," he said, and his voice was gentler now. He took a few steps forward, blocking everything else from my view so I had to look up at him as he put a hand on my shoulder. "Percy, I understand why you kept silent for so long."

I swallowed. "You do?"

He nodded. "You are a very loyal boy, Percy. And you care for Nico a great deal – more than any of us had expected. But then, one does not go into the Underworld and bargain a soul back for anything less than great love."

I squirmed a little under his grasp – okay, sure, what he was saying was true. But that doesn't mean I was entirely comfortable with standing there while Chiron talked about "great love" and all that mushy stuff. Maybe that was what I felt, but come on. Just because I was in love didn't mean I had to be all squishy and poetic about it – at least, not to anyone other than Nico. (And besides, I wasn't that squishy or poetic about it, even with Nico. I was pretty sure of that.)

Chiron smiled at that, just a little. But then his expression turned solemn again. "But I fear your love for him may have blinded you to warning signs, when you would have done better to pay attention to what they mean."

I blinked. "What do you mean?" In the back of my mind, I thought about Rachel's dream again. But I'd stopped that, right? So Chiron didn't need to know about it. Nico hadn't killed Clarisse. Sure, he'd run off, but we would find him. That was all that mattered, right?

"Nico is a very powerful half-blood," Chiron said, his hand falling away from my shoulder as he turned to look out the window, his hands clasped in front of him. "And he has just become possibly the most powerful half-blood alive. We cannot dismiss the fact that, while he also seems to love you a great deal, he may be having second thoughts."

I knew Chiron was talking about the fact that Nico hadn't always been all gung ho about joining our side. I knew that, like his father, he felt like an outcast and that he'd felt alone for a lot of his life. He'd been bitter about Bianca's death for a long time. I even knew what Chiron didn't – that for a second, Nico had been tempted to join Kronos back in Boston. He'd been willing to consider putting the Titan lord in power simply because it meant that his father wouldn't be in a position to do anything to me when my time of judgment in the afterlife came.

But he'd refused. And he wasn't going to consider it again. "But he wouldn't go to Kronos!" I said, voicing my thoughts out loud. "I know it! He doesn't like the gods, but he doesn't like Kronos any better. I know it, Chiron. He's just..."

Chiron turned again to face me. "I hope for all our sakes that you're right, Percy. But when we find him, we will have to take measures to ensure that."

"So you're going to lock him up," I said sourly, remembering a large part of why I hadn't told Chiron about all of this right away. But that was no way to force Nico to cooperate – in fact, it wouldn't even work. "Well, you can't – he can shadow travel, you know. I don't think anyone could keep him confined against his will, now that he's obviously good enough at it to get himself out of camp in one go."

Chiron's tail flicked. "I did not mean we would lock him up," he assured me. "That may be Kronos' solution, but it will not be ours." He paused, looking down at me. "But if there is something wrong with Nico, and it is clear that something is, then we must help him. And soon." He crouched down a bit so that he could look me in the eye. "And I'm sure I don't have to tell you that you will be a big part of that. But you will have to be honest with me – and with him."

I tried to hold Chiron's gaze, thinking about what he really meant. Because he was right – I hadn't been honest with Nico. I'd just sat and worried about him and held my tongue, and whatever was happening to him was as much my fault as it was his, or whatever was causing this change in him. If I'd spoken up sooner – even if I'd just talked to him about it, instead of letting him brush my concerns off and get all cuddly every time I tried to bring it up...

I nodded. "I know," I said, my voice sounding a lot smaller than it normally did. I felt like an idiot. I felt like I'd been doing a whole lot of nothing, and telling myself that Nico would just get better on his own, that he wouldn't have wanted me to interfere. What kind of boyfriend did that make me? The only answer I could come up with was a pretty terrible one.

"And I trust you," Chiron said, reaching over to my shoulder once more to give it a quick squeeze. "So does Nico. Now," he said, motioning to the door, "why don't you get something to eat and get some rest. We will devise a new plan to search for Nico in the morning. Perhaps he will have even come back on his own." Implicit in his words was the fact that, if Nico appeared overnight in the Poseidon cabin, I would bring him to the Big House first thing in the morning. I couldn't exactly argue with that.

"Yeah," I said, turning to head for the door. I wasn't planning to get any dinner, but I could go back to the Poseidon cabin and wait. Maybe Nico would be there already, I thought. And if he wasn't, well... I could wait up for him all night.

I paused at the door, turning around just enough to say, "Chiron... I'm sorry. And thanks."

Chiron gave me a small smile, nodding slightly. "I know, Percy. Goodnight."

*

But even though I'd gone straight back to my (still empty) cabin and propped myself up in bed with the intention to wait up all night in case Nico came back, I must have nodded off sometime around midnight. I didn't dream, which I guess was a relief, but that just meant it wasn't the dreams that woke me up, sometime around three or four in the morning.

When I did wake, I felt really disoriented. There was this buzzing in my ears and the feeling that you get when you're on a rollercoaster just as you go down the first drop and your stomach tries to crawl its way up your throat. I groaned and blinked in the dark cabin, trying to figure out why I felt like crap, but then I woke up fully and I knew.

These were the sensations that told Nico that someone's soul had passed from this world into his father's realm below. I could only feel them sometimes, when someone nearby (or really important to me, I'd discovered the horrible night that Nico had died), passed on. My skin broke into a cold sweat.

So why was I feeling like that now?

I didn't have much time to think about it further as I realized that there was shouting outside my cabin. The voices sounded panicked, but the words were muffled by the thick walls. I stumbled over to the door and pulled it open to see that the doors of almost all the other cabins were open, too. There were flashlight beams bouncing all over, and suddenly I saw one point in my direction.

I stood, leaning against the doorframe for support as the flashlight bounded up to me. It was then that I realized the flashlight was attached to Annabeth. Even though it was hard to see her face because of the bright light shining in my eyes, I would have recognized her face and her hair anywhere.

"Silena Beauregard is missing," she said tersely. "No one knows what happened, but most of her brothers and sisters say they woke up to a muffled scream and then she just wasn't in her bed anymore. Like she'd just melted into the shadows."

My heart clenched painfully as I realized that she'd just described almost exactly what it was like when Nico shadow traveled. And I could see that she knew it too.

Suddenly I felt like I was in the middle of a nightmare. I still felt sick to my stomach, because I knew without a doubt that someone was dead. I didn't know if it was Silena or Nico (oh gods, it couldn't be Nico again, I'd know, right?) or someone else entirely, but that almost didn't matter right now. The only thing that did matter was that I found Nico. Right now.

I hadn't actually been planning on sleeping, so I was conveniently already dressed. I hadn't even taken my shoes off or Riptide out of my pocket. And so, after staring at Annabeth for a few mind-numbing seconds, I took off out the door or my cabin and stumbled into the woods.

I didn't know how I was going to find Nico, but he had to be nearby – he'd never shadow traveled away from camp with me in tow because it was harder to transport two than one. Maybe I could follow the horrible sensation of death in my gut. I mean, most of me desperately hoped that when I got to wherever the tugging was leading me, Nico wouldn't be there. But it was the only lead I had to go on. And I had to find him first.

I heard Annabeth calling after me, but I just kept crashing through the woods, heedless of any monsters or harpies and not caring where I was going or who might find me. Annabeth's cries faded into the distance pretty quickly, and then I had to keep most of my concentration on the ground in the thin moonlight to keep from tripping and falling flat onto my still-sore nose. I hadn't even brought a flashlight with me, but there was no going back for it now.

I don't know how long I ran, but when I finally stumbled into the clearing I was so disoriented in the dark that I nearly tripped over them. But as I staggered to a stop I could see that there, laid out before me in the light of the waning moon, was exactly the scene Rachel had described so many weeks ago over the phone. And suddenly I really, really wished she hadn't been so uncannily right.

A girl lay on the ground, her limbs sprawled out like she'd tried to stop herself from falling. But she hadn't gotten up again. It was hard at first to make out her features or even her hair in the moonlight, but as I took a shaky step closer I realized, my heart sinking into my stomach, that I knew exactly who it was. It was Silena Beauregard, the head counselor of the Aphrodite cabin. And I knew without a doubt, thanks to the limited amount of Nico's power that I had running through my veins, that she was dead. Dead and gone.

Kneeling on hands and knees above the body, dark-haired and dark-clothed and pale-faced, was Nico. He looked up at me, and his expression was absolutely stricken in the moonlight. "Percy – " he choked out as he saw me, his voice strangled. "I didn't – I don't – " He stared at his hands like they weren't his.

His sword lay a few feet away in the grass, the dark blade made darker by the sticky film of blood covering it, leading in a trail back to Silena's body like Nico had flung it aside. His hands and clothes were covered in blood. I felt sick – as sick as Nico looked, as he scrambled away from the body and stared at me. His eyes were so wide that they looked like they were all pupil and no iris.

"Nico – " I whispered desperately, not even sure what I needed him – or me – to do or say. Maybe I should have been more supportive – maybe I should have rushed to his side and pulled him close. There was no way he could have done this, not the Nico staring up at me... but with the gory scene laid out before me all I could stupidly think was, how on earth could he not have?

Apparently I wasn't the only one. I heard crashing and the bushes behind me shuddered and suddenly there was Annabeth, pulling her Yankees cap off and dropping her deactivated flashlight onto the ground with a dull thud. She gasped and Nico's eyes whipped over to focus on her, and then he looked from her to me and something changed. His eyes seemed to grow darker and his face just went blank, like a mask.

A second later Nico sprang for his sword. Annabeth's knife flashed in the moonlight and I jumped an instant after that, hurling myself between them. "What – no!" I shouted, trying desperately to get Annabeth to back away. I knew something was wrong with Nico, but she didn't. Hurting him wasn't going to make it better, no matter what he'd done...

"Percy, he killed Silena!" Annabeth shrieked, her voice shrill and all the blood gone from her face. "She's dead! How can you still defend him?"

"Annabeth – Nico – just – stop!" I cried, feeling like I was being pulled in too many directions at once. Yes, it looked like Nico had just killed Silena, but he was seriously sick and sometimes things weren't what they seemed. What if he'd gotten bloody trying to fight off some monster? What if he'd brought her out here to talk and she'd tried to hurt him, and he'd fought back in self-defense? My mind was spinning with possibilities, each one crazier than the last but every one of them a way that made this look like anything other than the obvious. Because there had to be a way that Rachel was wrong. Hadn't I already stopped that horrible dream from happening? Then why was it happening now? How could it have possibly come true?

"Percy – !" Annabeth cried, and I turned just in time to see Nico turn and run for the treeline. His boots left wet footprints in the grass. Annabeth lunged after him again, but I caught her bodily and wouldn't let her go even as I watched Nico turn and, as he looked at us with that horrible blank mask of a face, he melted into the shadows beneath the trees. And then he was gone.

My stomach felt like it was turning to ice. And the ice felt like it was spreading, shooting through my veins until my arms and legs and hands started shaking so hard that I could barely stand. Nico had just run away again, and again there was no way I could follow him. And now I was left to deal with the consequences of something that I didn't even understand.

Annabeth slipped out of my grasp easily as my arms went numb. I felt my arms fall to my sides and I heard her calling my name, screaming at me but it sounded like she was far away. All I could hear was this noise like a jet engine roaring in my ears, drowning out every thought until even my mind was icy and numb and I was almost relieved, because if I couldn't think then I wouldn't have to deal with everything that had just happened.

But of course it couldn't last. The world slammed sharply back into focus as Annabeth slapped me hard across the face, the sound shooting through my ears as the skin of my cheek suddenly began to sting red-hot, chasing some of the ice away.

I stared at her like I was seeing her for the first time. Her hair was glowing silver in the moonlight and there were tears streaming down her face and she looked angrier than I'd ever seen her look before. "You're so stupid!" she screamed at me, but suddenly I wasn't sure if it was really me that she meant. She glanced down at the body on the ground again and her hand went to her mouth, like she had just realized who it was all over again. She turned away, taking a few steps before squatting in the grass and wrapping her arms around her knees. "Oh, gods..."

I was still feeling numb, like my brain couldn't process everything so it had decided it was safest to just shut down. But the stinging pain in my cheek kept me from shutting down completely, and now I could hear the sound of Annabeth's quiet sobs. I swallowed, my throat feeling almost too tight to breathe, and I didn't know how to deal with Annabeth or the fact that Nico had left so I did the only thing I could – I turned around and looked at Silena's body, silent and unmoving in the bloodstained grass.

She was wearing a pink cami and shorts, only now they were stained dark red-brown with blood. Her hair was a mess, flung all around her face, which lay with one cheek pressed into the grass. Somehow I didn't feel as sick as I thought I should, but maybe that was just the part of Nico that I had inside me. Or maybe I really was that numb.

I looked at the body, trying to figure out what had happened. I tried to reason out any way that this wasn't Nico's fault. And while I stood there, staring at what was left of Silena and trying to come up with any one reason that she wasn't dead by Nico's hand, I saw it.

There was something wrapped around her wrist. Though it was stained dark in places by blood, it winked in the moonlight as I walked towards the body. I crouched down and touched Silena's unmoving hand, slick with cooling blood. I didn't even feel the urge to gag or cry as I brought the lifeless fingers to my face, trying to focus on whatever had caught my attention.

It was a chain, I realized – a silver chain with a tiny silver charm hanging from it. It looked just like any one of the bracelets Silena usually wore, but I knew this one was different. The charm hanging from the chain was a tiny silver scythe: the symbol of Kronos.

I tried to swallow, but my mouth had gone suddenly dry. I stared at the charm until it felt like the image had been burned into my eyes. Finally I dropped her hand, the chain jingling quietly as Silena's lifeless arm thumped into the grass. The world seemed to spin around me until I felt like I would fall over, but this time it wasn't with dread – it was with an overwhelming sense of guilty relief.

Silena Beauregard was the spy. She'd been the camper working for Kronos – she was the one who had helped his forces during the Battle of the Labyrinth, and who'd told him about the plans to help us at Bunker Hill. She was the one who'd betrayed us. Somehow he'd gotten her under his power, and he'd manipulated her into working for him.

And somehow, Nico had caught her – and stopped her. He was innocent – he had to be. He might have killed her, but he'd saved all of us in doing so. He was a hero.

I was just staggering to my feet when the trees in front of Annabeth rustled and Thalia burst into the clearing, followed by four Hunters. All of them had their bows drawn. The arrows seemed to glow softly in the moonlight. Thalia looked from Annabeth to me, and then at the body on the ground. Slowly, she lowered her bow; the other Hunters followed suit, but they spread out along the edges of the clearing like they were setting up a perimeter, just in case. I didn't tell them, but they hadn't needed to do that. I was pretty sure that, given the way things looked, Nico wouldn't be coming back. At least, not tonight.

But maybe soon, I thought. Once I cleared his name... he could come back. I'd find him somehow, and bring him back. It would be okay again.

"What happened here?" Thalia asked haltingly, looking at Silena's body. "This... this is Silena, isn't it?"

Annabeth, who'd stood up when the Hunters arrived, spoke first. "It was Nico," she said, and her voice was raw but it still managed to sound scathing. "He – "

But I couldn't let her finish. I had to tell them the truth. "He found out she was spying for Kronos," I said decisively, "and he must have killed her before she could do it again."

Both Annabeth and Thalia stared at me, their eyes wide and bright in the moonlight. "What?" Annabeth demanded, her voice barely above a whisper. "Percy, what are you saying?"

I pointed to Silena's wrist. "The chain – it's a charm bracelet. I think she's been wearing it for a while now. The charm is a scythe. The symbol of Kronos." There was no way she would have worn that mistakenly, and it certainly wasn't fashionable to wear old-school farming equipment on your bracelets. Even I knew that much. Silena might have looked like an airheaded model, but she wasn't stupid. I didn't know how Kronos had swayed her to his cause, but the fact was that he had.

Thalia knelt beside the body, touching the bracelet with one hand. After a minute she nodded, looking up at me. "You're right. It is a scythe."

"What?" Annabeth said again, like she couldn't understand what was going on. "Silena was the spy?"

"She must have been," I reasoned. "And Nico must have found out. He must have brought her here to confront her."

Annabeth looked like she was going to be sick all over again. Her eyes were puffy and red, and her face was still pale as she stared at the body in the grass. Then she looked at me and for a minute her eyes looked so lost, so remorseful, that I wanted to go to her and hug her. I mean, I might be dating Nico, but Annabeth was one of my best friends. And right now she looked like she really needed me to be there for her. It made my heart hurt the way it had hurt that night on my birthday, when Nico had shown up and looked at the cake on my dresser like he'd never had it before in his life. Maybe he hadn't. I'd never asked.

But then Annabeth shook her head like she was clearing it, and she ran a hand over her face. When she looked at me again the old, confident Annabeth was back. She turned to Thalia, who was watching the both of us, and said, in a voice that only shook a little, "We should bring the body back to Chiron. He'll want to know what happened."

How we managed to get Silena's body back to the Big House without running into any other campers I'll never know. Maybe the gods really were on our side, for once. All I do know is that I'll never forget the look on Chiron's face when he saw what the Hunters were carrying, slung between their arms. They laid her body on the porch at Chiron's feet, and I realized it was up to me to tell him what had happened.

I honestly don't know how I kept talking – it was like my mouth wasn't connected to my brain anymore, because my brain had just kind of shut down. I told him everything as objectively as I could, from waking up with death ringing in my ears to finding Silena and Nico, to Nico scrambling away in the shadows and me finding the scythe charm on Silena's bracelet. I explained how she must have been the spy, and how Nico was innocent, how he'd saved us all.

Chiron listened to it all without a word, and he didn't take his eyes off Silena's body. Thalia and Annabeth were silent behind me, and the other four Hunters could have disappeared for all I knew. When I finished there was silence for a long time, heavy like a blanket weighing down on all of us until I felt like I might suffocate. Finally, Chiron turned away from the body and asked us all to follow him.

He led us down to the cabins, where campers were still wide away and light from open doors flooded into the little courtyard around which the cabins stood. Chiron called everyone out into the center. All around us campers shifted restlessly, and in the seconds before he spoke I found myself wondering what Chiron could possibly say.

I almost didn't want him to tell anyone that Silena had been a spy. I mean, of course I was angry and hurt and I was having a hard time figuring out how Kronos could have convinced her to work for him against us. But now she was dead and her actions couldn't hurt us anymore. Was it really fair to those people who'd cared about her, to tell them that she'd been stabbing them in the back for months? Most of the campers didn't know there had been a spy in the first place – only the heads of each cabin knew. It had been safer that way.

But if Chiron didn't tell anyone about Silena, Nico looked like a cold-blooded murderer and he wasn't. Was it better to implicate Silena, who was now dead with no reputation to uphold, or Nico, who was alive and still out there and who would need the support of Camp Half-Blood if we were going to win this battle? I was suddenly really, really glad I wasn't the one who was going to have to speak. I really had no idea what Chiron could do to make things okay.

But somehow, when he spoke, he did. "Campers," he said, and his voice was grave and quiet, "it is my sad duty to inform you that Silena Beauregard has fallen in battle."

There were a couple of gasps and sobs from the Aphrodite kids; I couldn't blame them. I half-expected Clarisse to shout out something about Nico, but even she was shocked into silence. Charles Beckendorf just stood there like a statue and blinked, his face utterly blank as Chiron went on. "Silena lost her life in the fight against Kronos, but in doing so she has protected all of you."

I guessed that was true. Now that Silena was dead, Kronos no longer had eyes and ears in Camp Half-Blood. She had, in a way, given her life to save us. I just wished it hadn't had to happen like that.

Just beneath Chiron's words I could hear a message to Thalia, Annabeth, and myself: You are the only ones who know the truth. And it should stay that way. I found that I had no argument at all with that. But I was worried about what that would mean for Nico.

But Chiron wasn't done yet. "I also wish to make it absolutely clear that Nico di Angelo is in no way to be implicated in her death. I know that many of you still have your doubts about him, but fate rarely makes things easy on us and I know that each of you understands this perfectly. I would ask you to remember this: Nico can only be as strong as those who stand behind him. And every time we doubt ourselves, we make Kronos that much stronger." Chiron paused, his eyes sweeping over each and every camper. "We will hold a funeral for Silena in the morning. I would ask that you all go back to your cabins and try to get some rest. I have a feeling we will need it in the days to come."

Honestly, it was the best I could have asked for. Nico's name had been cleared, and while maybe only a few of us would know how much of a hero he really was, I was okay with that. I thought that he probably would be, too. If only he would come back.

As Chiron turned and started back up the hill, I expected everyone to explode into a frenzy – accusations, anger, sorrow, maybe even more questions about Silena or Nico. But in the wake of Chiron's speech, everyone seemed to have become as numb as I felt. Everyone began to disperse to their respective cabins slowly, like they were sleepwalking. There wasn't much talking, though I could still hear a few muffled sobs coming from the direction of the Aphrodite cabin.

I looked around for Thalia and Annabeth, but they were heading back to their own cabins. I found my feet taking me back to the Poseidon cabin, which felt too big and empty as I closed the door behind me, finding my way back to my bed in the dark. Now that I was alone again, the hole where Nico had been just this morning seemed wider than ever, and more painful. The numbness in my mind helped a little, though, and I mostly felt like I just wanted to go to sleep and not wake up until things were normal again.

But things are never really normal for a half-blood.

I hadn't been present for Nico's funeral pyre, and now I had to admit that I was almost glad for it. Seeing a big, tough guy like Beckendorf break down as he lit the fire beneath Silena's body the next morning hit me like a punch in the stomach. I felt like I could barely stay on my feet as I stood with all of the other campers in the arena and the flames of Silena Beauregard's funeral pyre licked the sky, devouring her hot pink burial shroud and any last traces of the link Kronos had with Camp Half-Blood. I prayed to any god that would listen that it would be the last traitor we'd ever have to burn, because turning on the gods was one thing, but turning on your friends – your family – was another.

Maybe that was part of why I felt so anxious about how Nico had left. I knew that he'd felt abandoned by almost everyone he'd ever cared about, and I was lucky because I had never had to go through anything like that. On some level I knew that maybe I never would really understand what he'd felt like. But all I could think about now was how that didn't matter anymore. I just wanted him back, so I could show him how important family could be. I wanted to prove to him that not everyone left and not everyone turned on you in the end. That morning, watching Charles Beckendorf's face through the flames, I felt like even if Nico had turned to Kronos, it wouldn't matter. I would stand by him, because he was Nico and I was never going to leave him.

That thought scared me. It scared me a lot. I shoved it away almost as soon as I'd thought it, but I couldn't take it back. It followed me around all day, as campers went through the motions of their normal routines even though there was no heart in it. By lunchtime Chiron called the rest of the day off, and I wasn't sure if that was better or worse. All I knew was that free time would give me more time to think about Nico, and I couldn't bear that. And when I went to the arena in the afternoon to try and work myself into exhaustion so that maybe I could sleep through the night, I found that I wasn't the only one who'd decided physical exertion was better than thinking about what had happened.

Even Clarisse, for all that she gave me the evil eye, didn't say anything. It was actually kind of nice – just a bunch of kids trying to work through their frustrations and sorrow, no one asking what anyone else was thinking about. No one cared if you didn't normally get along, if you hated each other or if you were best friends. We all just put everything we had into training, into stabbing and thrusting and parrying and ducking, and all anyone could hope for was that if we pushed our bodies to their absolute limit, there would be no energy left to deal with anything else. And the best part was, it worked – because when I fell into bed that night after a dinner I hadn't even tasted, the darkness closed in around me and sleep took over before my worries could.