"Power has no limits."- Tiberius

    "I had a dream last night," Nico told Will over breakfast.

Will swallowed a bite of the hard biscuit he had been given to eat. It suddenly felt heavy in his throat and he gulped down some water. The entire time, Nico looked at him with a glint in his eyes. He had only eaten a few bites of his breakfast before pushing it away.

"About?" Will asked.

"About my sister," Nico said. "I had a dream about how Bianca died."

Will reached across the table. To his surprise, Nico didn't pull away when he grabbed his hand. He gave it a comforting squeeze before releasing it.

"In my dream, she told me Kronos didn't mean to kill her," Nico said hoarsely. "I — I killed my grandfather because I thought he murdered my sister, but now I'm not so sure. I have no idea what the dream meant."

"You're feeling guilty," Will stated.

Nico chewed his lip and nodded after a few moments.

"You're not as evil as the others think," Will said.

"I'm not sure about that," Nico said. "I killed my grandfather."

"In revenge," Will pointed out. "That's different than killing in cold blood."

"Is it?" Nico asked. "A consequentialist would think not. Either way, someone died and it was my fault. I lost faith in the criminal justice system, so I tried to carry out justice with my own hands and look how that ended up."

Nico sighed and added, "I just wish there was some way that I could find out the truth."

"There is," someone said.

Nico turned around in his seat to see Thalia Grace. Even in orange prison scrubs, she still managed to look intimidating with her short black hair and intense blue eyes. She looked like the kind of woman who could tame wolves and cook outside on a spit — which was what she used to do before the Hunters of Artemis were targeted by the FBI as a domestic terrorist organization and its members were held behind bars.

"Bianca was killed by accident," Thalia said, "but the others weren't. He killed Zoe that day too and he only regretted killing your sister because she was his granddaughter. I was there on the mission. Percy Jackson of all people followed us and tried to warn us off, but we wouldn't listen. It was dark and Kronos was walking. He shot at us. Percy and I were wounded, but Bianca and Zoe died."

Nico felt the tension in his stomach melt away and then refreeze until it was a colder and harder icicle than before. The truth made everything more complicated. Nico has done what he believed was right, but the knowledge that led him to commit murder was faulty. If he could go back, would he still have done it? With a shudder, Nico realized he probably wouldn't have. The hatred that had eaten him away for sixteen years was beginning to be replaced by regret and grief.

"I'm never getting out of here," Nico said.

"The only way out for a man like you is death," Thalia said bluntly, "but don't despair. Plenty of us are stuck here for decades too."