I wish everything went back to normal after that, but no. I could feel Chiron's eyes on me, watching me. Whether for a reason to pull me away from my teaching duties or to pull me away if I started panicking, I had no idea. And really, knowing why wouldn't have changed it, so I tried my hardest to ignore him.

"Shit," I hissed, watching lines of blood bloom across my hand. I dropped a box of daggers and my first instinct was to try to catch the falling blades. "Brilliant Percy, absolutely brilliant."

"Are you okay, my dear?" Chiron trotted over and took my hand. He pulled his thumb over one of the cuts. I winced. "These are pretty deep. I want you to go to the infirmary and have one of the healers make sure you didn't damage anything important."

"Chir-"

"Perseus, I have had millennia to practice healing. Listen to me when I say I don't want to leave this to chance." A scream rang out and he sighed. "If you excuse me, I need to go help reattach an arm."

I nodded and walked to the infirmary. Surprisingly, Will was the healer on duty. Surprisingly, Nico sat on a cot talking about something.

"Percy! Let me see that," Will said, rushing over. He held my hand between his and closed his eyes. "No tendon or ligament damage."

I pulled my hand away before he could start sending anything more than that. "So I can just wrap it and it'll be fine?"

"No." He grabbed some salve and applied it to the wounds before wrapping them. "There you go. Right as rain."

I nodded, but I didn't leave. Nico refused to look at me. I couldn't blame him. I got his sister killed.

Again.

"Uh, Will?"

"What?"

"Can I talk to you about-" I was shoved out of the way as a few of Will's siblings carried two campers in.

"Sorry, Percy. How about you go talk to Chiron?"

Swallowing, I nodded before slinking out of the infirmary. I didn't go to Chiron. I didn't talk to anyone. Even Grover. He had rushed up to me with a wide grin on his face— he'd just gotten back from one of his projects apparently— and I brushed him off, mumbling an excuse about having a class.

I should've known that would lead to trouble. I was curled up on my bed when a knock at the door startled me. It of course opened easily, as doors do when they're not locked.

"Perce, you okay?" Grover walked in. He frowned and looked around, obviously smelling the air. "Why's it smell like blood?"

"I'm a girl, G-Man. Plus my hand probably isn't helping." I held it up so he could see the bandages.

He shook his head. "It smells old."

I groaned and sat up. I pulled up my pant leg to show him the bandages around that. "Sparring accident. Decided to let it heal naturally so I'd remember to watch my legs. And no healing me. I don't want to be growing moss out of my ears."

He snorted and shook his head. "I'm getting better."

"So is my ex-wife's aim."

"You really need to stop watching kids cartoons."

"Says the thirty two year old who watches Hercules."

"Ironically."

I leaned forward and hugged him, relaxing when I felt him return it. Comfort washed over me, in part from the hug  but most of it flowed through the empathy link.

"I'm guessing by the way you tensed up you remembered the empathy link." Grover said, not removing himself from the hug. "Come on, Perce, you can trust me."

"You don't want to know, Grover."

"Yes, I do."

"Trust me. You don't." If he knew that I've been hurting myself, that it's only gotten worse since the gods left, that I've done it more often in order to keep all of those godsdamned traitorous voices out of my head, he'd- "If I told you, you'd hate me."

"Percy, nothing you could do could make me hate you. We've been to the Underworld and back together. You've saved my life. We're best friends." He lightly bumped his head against mine. I winced and rubbed mine while he bleated out a "Sorry!"

"Annabeth is dead because of me. You knew her longer than you knew me. You should hate me for letting her die."

"But I don't."

"I could've gotten you killed."

"And that would've meant you would've died too."

"I almost accepted an offer to join Gaea."

I could feel his conviction falter and I hoped I had finally gotten through to him. I hoped he'd be smart enough to leave, to get away from me before I got him hurt.

All it did was make him hug me tighter. "She offered to spare the ones you cared about, didn't she?"

"I wish I would've accepted it. The others would be alive."

"Millions of others would've died."

"I-"

"I'm going to keep coming up with things to counter whatever Minotaur-crap comes out of your mouth so you might as well stop."

I swallowed and pulled my trump card. Would Camp cast me out if Grover spills this? Yes. But it's better that way.

If they throw me out, then I can't rip Camp apart from the inside. I won't have to worry about the voices nagging that this is all a trap. The voices trying to poison my mind, the ones whispering They all know. They all know you're a monster.

"I could have saved the others. But I didn't."

I typed this last night at 11:30 but my signal was crap. Joy.

See yah