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✿⁠ ♡ ◍⁠ •⁠ᴗ⁠•⁠ ◍ ✧⁠ * 。♡

"Three deaths and twenty-six mutilations,"

✿⁠ ♡ ◍⁠ •⁠ᴗ⁠•⁠ ◍ ✧⁠ * 。♡

THE SUN WAS SETTING behind the dining pavilion as the campers came up from their cabins.

Lilith, Percy and Tyson stood in the shadow of a marble column and watched them file in as Annabeth promised she’d join them later.

She went off to join her siblings from the Athena cabin—a dozen boys and girls with blond hair and gray eyes like hers.

Annabeth wasn’t the oldest, but
she’d been at camp more summers than just about anybody. Anyone could tell that by looking at her camp
necklace- one bead for every summer, and Annabeth had six. No one questioned her right to lead the line.

Next came Clarisse, leading the Ares cabin. She had one arm in a sling and a nasty-looking gash on her cheek, but otherwise her encounter with the bronze bulls didn’t seem to have fazed her.

Someone had taped a piece of paper to her back that said, YOU MOO, GIRL! But nobody in her cabin was bothering to tell her about it.

After the Ares kids came the Hephaestus cabin—six guys led by Charles Beckendorf, a big fifteenyear—old African American kid and a brother figure for Lilith.

He had hands the size of catchers’ mitts and a face that was hard and squinty from looking into a blacksmiths forge all day. He was nice enough once you got to know him, but no one except Lilith and her friends got the courage to call him Charlie. Most just called him Beckendorf.

Charlie could make anything by a chunk of metal. Lilith had once asked for a dagger made of Silver, he made it within half an hour.

The other cabins filed in: Demeter, Apollo, Aphrodite, Dionysus. Naiads came up from the canoe lake.

Dryads melted out of the trees. From the meadow came a dozen satyrs, who reminded Lilith of Grover as the girl wondered about where he was.

After the satyrs filed in to dinner, the Hermes cabin brought up the rear. They were always the biggest cabin. The same cabin which was home of Lilith's closest friends who had betrayed her.

Last summer, it had been led by Luke, the guy who’d fought with Thalia and Annabeth on top of Half-Blood Hill.

Now the Hermes cabin was led by Travis and Connor Stoll. They weren’t twins, but they looked so much alike it didn’t matter.

Lilith was the one who could identify which one was who. Fred and George were just like them.

They were both tall and skinny, with mops of brown hair that hung in their eyes. They wore orange CAMP HALF-BLOOD Tshirts untucked over baggy shorts, and they had those elfish features all Hermes’s kids had: upturned eyebrows, sarcastic smiles, a gleam in their eyes-like they were about to drop a firecracker down your shirt.

Lilith and Percy exchanged glances as soon as everyone filled in, they led Tyson inside.

Conversations faltered. Heads turned. "Who invited that ?" Lilith glared in their direction, and the boy, Mason fell silent.

Lilith turned as her eyes met Dionysius. The God gave a subtle nod to Lilith which the girl returned.

He dragged on. "Well, well, if it isn’t Peter Johnson. My millennium is complete."

"Percy Jackson … Sir." Lilith could see Percy clenching his way.

Mr. D sipped his Diet Coke. "Yes. Well, as you young people say these days: Whatever."