Nothing is mine.

Daughter of the Search and all its hate, come in grief and rage to seek her Fate...

From Mother's Womb

Percy sat on the edge of the dock, wiggling his toes in the cool water and spinning the slim bracelet of leather leaves around his wrist. The gleaming silver clasp flashed in the morning sun, the two halves of a crescent moon joined by three small links of chain.

I have no idea how I even use this. He inspected the clasp, but found no join or hook. She's probably laughing at me, isn't she, Zoë?

'Oi!' Clarisse yelled. 'Percy! You need to get up here. Your Plant-Princess decided to be stupid.'

Katie. Percy's heart plummeted, sinking right down to the bottom of that crushing black, and he leapt to his feet, jogging up the hill. What did she do?

Clarisse scowled at him, her lips twisted into a grim line beneath her sharp nose. 'She's with Chiron and Dionysius.'

'She's not mine,' Percy said, striding through the cabins.

'Isn't she?' Clarisse shrugged. 'But fine, I won't say it if you don't want me to, Sea-boy.'

'What's happened? Is she okay?'

'She's fine. For now.'

Percy quickened his stride, his hand slipping to the thin line of Anaklusmos in his pocket as he pushed the door to the Big House open with one foot and swept through into the front room.

'Ah,' Dionysius drawled, his purple eyes bright and hot as neon lights flashing in the fog. 'The root of the trouble arrives to explain the sour taste of the grape.'

Katie hunched in the chair nearest the door, staring at the table between her hands, and Chiron paced back and forth before the window, his hooves ringing on the boards.

Percy rested a hand on Katie's shoulder and gave her a squeeze through her dark green hoodie. 'Are you okay?'

She reached up and took his hand, clutching it tight, and her green eyes brimmed with worry. 'I went to talk to the oracle.'

He sighed. 'Why would you do that, Katie?'

'Because I am not just a girl who grows strawberries.' Katie's green eyes flashed. 'And—' her voice shrank to a whisper '—so you wouldn't have to ask this time. It's someone else's turn to be brave.'

'Yes, yes.' Dionysius conjured a can of Diet Coke and took a long sip, wrinkling his nose. 'You can do this later when I don't have to be there. Tell him what the oracle said.'

'She… She said—' Katie took a deep breath '—Daughter of the Search and all its hate, come in grief and rage to seek her Fate.' Her lip trembled and she inhaled another long breath. 'From Mother's womb spring three most dire: fallen grace, senseless strife, and nature's pyre. Come to ruin, raze, and ravage; insatiable and savage. One to die upon golden coast, extinguished by wild silver host. One to perish in glorious pass, captured in spear-daughter's grasp. And one to fall in sunny vale, to disappoint, fight, and fail.'

All the weight of the waves crashed down upon Percy's heart, crushing it down beneath an endless flood of cold black, grinding it away until just a single grain of sand clung on against all the strength of the sea. 'Well, it could be worse. At least there's nothing dangerous and Lydian this time. And it doesn't sound like anyone's going to fall all the way down to Hades and get killed by angry undead kangaroos.'

'Percy,' Katie whispered. 'You always said you don't want to disappoint.'

He mustered a grin. 'Right. But I always think it's me. I even convinced myself that instead of being sixteen years old, it just meant reaching the sixteenth floor of the Empire State Building, and that's just stupid.'

The light in Dionysius's purple eyes flashed like neon bulbs burning in the smoke. 'This is the prophecy we have been waiting for, Old Horse.'

'I know.' Chiron's pacing slowed and he folded his arms across his chest with a long sigh. 'The first line is concerning.'

'Is it?' Percy asked. 'Are fallen grace, senseless strife, and nature's pyre that bad?'

Chiron steepled his fingers, a deep sombre gleam in his eyes.

I suppose this time it really is me, Zoë. It's not a final choice if I don't die, and I can only die if I disappoint. The endless weight of all the waves drove his heart down into that bottomless black; they crushed that last grain of sand to dust. But I hoped I would make her proud for longer. You did it for thousands of years, and I only managed two.

'The only beings of grave threat that sprang from their mother's womb ready to fight are the Gigantes,' Chiron said. 'The prophecy implies that three of them will rise soon, and, somehow, the three of you will cast them back down.'

'Spear-daughter,' Clarisse declared, raising her chin and staring Percy dead in the eye. 'Every step of the way, strategos, with my shield in my hand.'

'Clarisse,' he murmured.

She clenched her jaw. 'No. Not one step back. Not ever.'

'Katie,' Chiron said. 'This prophecy was given to you; if you wish to pursue it, you must choose your companions.'

Katie stared up at Percy, her heart in her soft grass-green eyes. 'But—'

'Whoever you choose, you were always going to choose,' he said, giving her fingers a squeeze. 'And whatever happens, it will be their choices, not yours, that lead to it; they don't have to come with you.'

She swallowed. 'Then I choose Percy.'

'Then it's settled,' Clarisse said. 'We'll go.'

'I didn't say you!' Katie glowered at her.

'Well, too bad, Strawberry-girl, I'm coming. Where that idiot goes, I go. And that's that.'

'Fine,' she muttered. 'I guess… I guess we leave tomorrow then?'

'Sure, I'll pack my stuff then.' Percy pulled his hand back, but Katie's grip tightened. 'Er…'

'Do you want to see the Moonflowers again?' Katie asked, pink blossoming across her cheeks. 'Before we have to leave?'

Oh, Katie. Sharp cold waves of guilt broke over him. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry I'll never be sorry enough.

'Of course,' he murmured. 'Just for a brief while.'

Katie pushed her chair back, clutching his hand tight as she led him out and back past the tables and the fire. Hestia sat beside the flames upon her white cushion, poking at the flickering orange tongues with the tip of her smoking stick, her eyes soft and warm as the embers of a summer beach bonfire.

The gentle heat flared on his finger and the glyphs for Elpis glowed bright as hot coals.

Katie shoved the door to Demeter's Cabin open, tugging him after her and out into the small garden at the back. Delicate white moonflowers hung from the steep rockery wall, shining with a soft, cool pale light, their sweet scent filling the small grove.

'They're really beautiful,' Katie whispered. 'She was too, wasn't she?'

Percy nodded. 'She's out there somewhere across the sea, all alone, waiting for someone to come and save her.' He reached up and cupped the white flowers in his hand. 'But she has to save herself. She has to choose well or she'll be trapped there forever.'

Katie drew his other hand closer and wrapped both hands around it. 'Percy… if — if we come back, will you…?' Her lower lip trembled and her whole heart hung in the gentle light of her green eyes. 'Just a little?'

He flinched, cold bitter guilt churning in his stomach like storm-swept waves. 'I don't know,' Percy whispered. 'I just… I have to choose well. And I have to show everyone else that you can choose well. And I can't disappoint.'

'It is about you, isn't it?' Tears clung to Katie's lashes.

'Maybe.' He eased his fingers free. 'If I disappoint, I die.'

'Why?' She demanded a fierce glint in her green eyes. 'And who? Who could you ever disappoint?'

Percy glanced up into the pale blue morning sky, gazing up toward the fading crescent of the moon, and smiled. 'If I forsake what binds me to the mortal world, I'll die.'

'You don't want to tell me who,' Katie whispered. 'Do you… do you love her?'

'Love is the only immortal thing we have,' he said. 'It's the only thing that can anchor you if you step into the Styx.'

'So if you stopped loving her… if you loved me, you'd die?' Katie squeezed her eyes tight shut. 'Oh great, now I'm going to cry again.'

'I'm sorry,' Percy said, helpless as a speck of dust swept from the shore. 'I don't know how to stop it hurting. I never know how.'

'I know.' She buried her face in the crook of his neck and clung tight to him. 'But if you can't choose me, could you at least kiss me?' Katie glanced up. 'Just once. Please…'

'I…'

She stretched onto her tiptoes and pressed her warm soft lips to his, leaving a lingering taste of sweet strawberry jelly. 'Right.' Katie dashed her tears away. 'Tomorrow we have a quest. You know, I've never been on a quest before, I just grew strawberries, but—' her fingers withered and turned dark as pitch '—I'm not just sweet. And I won't let it be you. What would this other girl think if I left you to die just so she couldn't have you either?'

Percy stared at her; all the weight of the waves hung upon his heart, cold and still as the dead winter sea.

'Don't look at me like that, I'll cry again.' Katie blinked back her tears. 'Just. I need to pack. I'm sorry, Percy.'

'It's okay,' he whispered. 'I'm the one who should be sorry. This is all I ever seem to do.'

She turned away with a choked sob and Percy's heart wrenched, ripped down into the pit of his stomach like a leaf seized by the white froth of the waves and swept out to see.

I will never be sorry enough. He slipped out to stand stricken on the concrete step of Katie's cabin. Never.

'I think you finally broke her heart completely.' Aphrodite's whisper tickled his cheek, full of the rich sweet fragrance of figs. 'She will never be the same now.'

Percy trudged back toward his own cabin, caught in the cold bitter winds of a storm of guilt. 'I know. You don't need to twist the knife, Aphrodite.' He dropped down onto the dock and stared across the lake. 'Right now it really feels like it might be better if I did disappoint.'

'No, Percy—' her slim warm arms wrapped about his head and drew him back into her lap '—it's meant to hurt. If it did not, it would not feel so sweet and dear when finally found.'

He stared up through Annabeth's blonde curls into Zoë's obsidian dark eyes and sighed. 'I hope you're enjoying this, because I think I'm just about out of time to break hearts now.'

'Great woe,' Aphrodite whispered, running gentle fingers through his hair just as his mom had done when he'd come home from school in tears. 'The sort only the fiercest flame of love is worth.'

'Well, I'm going to forsake it soon, if that prophecy is anything to go by.' Percy swallowed a hot lump and a clamour of cold guilty waves. 'To disappoint, fight and fail.'

'But not to fall, Percy.' She bent over him, her hair shivering long and dark as Calypso's, her bright red lips grazing the tip of his nose, a finger's width from his. 'To disappoint, to fight, to fail, but not to fall, not even in love.'

AN: More via Discord through the link!

linktr . ee / mjbradley