He seems distant, no longer quite Roman.”
I spent enough time with Circe to know charmspeak when I hear it. Your friend Piper has sorcery in her words. “Convince me that I’m not making a mistake by trusting you. “I wanted to hear it from you,” Reyna said. Work crews were repairing a broken section, probably damaged in the recent battle. To the north, an aqueduct marched toward the Berkeley Hills. To the south, beyond the lake, a cluster of temples perched on a hill. The whole city spread out below them like a 3-D mosaic. Reyna stopped at the edge of the terrace. Seeing their cranky old camp director immortalized in stone, wearing a diaper and spewing water from his mouth, made her feel a little better. D, as they called him back at Camp Half-Blood. She knew the god in his Greek form, Dionysus-or Mr. In the middle of the terrace stood a statue of Bacchus in a sort of ballet position, wearing nothing but a loincloth, his cheeks puffed out and lips pursed, spouting water into a fountain.ĭespite her worries, Annabeth almost laughed. Bees buzzed through honeysuckle and jasmine, which filled the afternoon air with a dizzying mix of perfumes.
Grapevine trellises made a canopy overhead. They reached the top of the hill, where a terrace overlooked the entire valley. Annabeth thought it might be safer not to respond. I’d never seen anyone refuse Circe’s hospitality, much less outwit her. “And Hylla is queen of the Amazons? How did you two-?” (That last part seemed funny afterward but at the time, it had been terrifying.) As for Reyna…she’d been one of the servants who had combed Annabeth’s hair. Annabeth had been tempted, maybe just a little, until she realized the place was a trap, and Percy had been turned into a rodent. Then Circe had made her sales pitch: if Annabeth stayed on the island, she could have magical training and incredible power. She had helped Annabeth get cleaned up and given her a beautiful new dress and a complete makeover. Percy and she had washed ashore from the Sea of Monsters. “Circe…” Annabeth remembered her trip to the island of the sorceress. At any rate, when we last met, I was a mere handmaiden in the house of Circe.” She left just this morning, before you arrived. Of course you spoke mostly with my older sister Hylla, who is now queen of the Amazons. A vague memory started tugging at her-the way Reyna brushed her hair behind her ear, the silver ring she wore with the torch and sword design. The greyhounds followed, leaving the children behind. A group of children spilled out of a nearby alleyway and gathered around Argentum, petting the dog and laughing, unfazed by its razor-sharp teeth. “At least some of them-”Ī few yards away, the silver dog barked. “But I’ve never met Ella before today, and I’ve never heard those lines exactly.” “It sounded like a prophecy,” she admitted.
She didn’t know if that applied to magical metal dogs, but she decided it would be better to tell the truth. She had heard that dogs could smell fear, even detect changes in a human’s breathing and heartbeat. Something about Aurum’s ruby eyes made her uneasy. We both know that, don’t we?”Īnnabeth swallowed. “The harpy Ella…it was a prophecy she spoke. “There’s more.” Reyna snapped her fingers, and her golden dog, Aurum, trotted over. The past few days, they had been looking to her for orders-even Jason, who could have pulled rank as the son of Jupiter, and Coach Hedge, who didn’t take orders from anyone. But she wondered if her friends on the Argo II would agree. Not leaders of dangerous quests.”Īnnabeth started to object that she wasn’t the leader of the quest. “They might be craftsmen, artists, maybe advisers, but not warriors. And even if your camp had children of Minerva-” No wonder the Romans had been giving her strange looks. “Got it.” Annabeth’s hot chocolate suddenly tasted like dust. So the idea that a maiden goddess would have children-” The Vestal Virgins, for instance…if they broke their vows and fell in love with anyone, they would be buried alive. “But Romans take vows of maidenhood very seriously. “I understand that you Greeks don’t see things the same way,” Reyna continued. People usually asked her whether or not she had a belly button, since she had been born magically. Talking about that always made Annabeth feel self-conscious, like she was some sort of freak. She didn’t want to get into the details of Athena’s children-how they were born straight from the mind of the goddess, just as Athena herself had sprung from the head of Zeus. The idea that Minerva would have children-frankly, it’s a little shocking to us.” You won’t find any children of Minerva here. She’s also a maiden goddess, like Diana…the one you call Artemis. She’s the goddess of crafts and wisdom…but she isn’t really a goddess of war. “I take it Minerva isn’t…uh, quite as respected here?”
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