CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

₊˚࿐࿔ 𖥧‧₊⚘ ❀༉. 𓏲｡

There were too many good-byes.

Sylvie hated it every time she had to see camp burial shrouds being burned, and this was certainly not an exception.

Among the dead, Lee Fletcher from the Apollo cabin had been downed by a giant's club. He was wrapped in a golden shroud without any decoration. Castor was wrapped in a deep purple shroud embroidered with grapevines. He'd been seventeen years old. Pollux and Florian both tried to say a few words, but Pollux couldn't get any words out past his sobs and Florian was too haunted in his own mind to speak—Castor had taken his last breath in Florian's arms, actually. In the end, the two boys just silently took a torch. They lit the funeral pyre in the middle of the amphitheater, and within seconds the row of shrouds was engulfed in fire, sending smoke and sparks up to the stars.

They spent the next day treating the wounded, which was almost everybody. Will wanted to monitor Sylvie throughout the whole morning considering everything she'd endured without stopping, but Sylvie had a sad idea that the young boy just wanted to distract himself from his eldest brother's death. Meanwhile, Sylvie's healthy siblings, the satyrs, and the dryads all worked to repair the damage in the woods.

At noon, the Council of Cloven Elders held an emergency meeting in their sacred grove. The three senior satyrs were there, along with Chiron, who was in wheelchair form. His broken horse leg was still mending, so he would be confined to the chair for a few months, until the leg was strong en0ugh to take his weight. The grove was filled with satyrs and dryads and naiads up from the water—hundreds of them, anxious to hear what would happen. Sylvie, Percy, Annabeth, and Juniper stood by Grover's side.

Silenus wanted to exile Grover immediately, but Chiron persuaded him to at least hear evidence first, so they told everyone what happened in the crystal cavern, and what Pan had said. Then several eyewitnesses from the battle described the weird sound Grover had made, which drove the Titan's army back underground.

"It was panic," insisted Juniper. "Grover summoned the power of the wild god."

"Panic?" Percy asked.

"Percy," Chiron explained, "during the first war of the gods and the Titans, Lord Pan let forth a horrible cry that scared away the enemy armies. It is—It was his greatest power—a massive wave of fear that helped the gods win the day. The word panic is named after Pan, you see. And Grover used that power, calling it forth from within himself."

"Preposterous!" Silenus bellowed. "Sacrilege! Perhaps the wild god favored us with his blessing. Or perhaps Grover's music was so awful it scared the enemy away!"

"That wasn't it, sir," Grover said. He sounded a lot calmer than Sylvie felt. "He let his spirit pass into all of us. We must act. Each of us must work to renew the wild, to protect what's left of it. We must spread the word. Pan is dead. There is no one but us."

"After two thousand years of searching, this is what you would have us believe?" Silenus cried. "Never! We must continue the search. Exile the traitor!"

Some of the older satyrs muttered assent.

"A vote!" Silenus demanded. "Who would believe this ridiculous young satyr, anyway?"

"I would," said a familiar voice.

Everyone turned. Striding into the grove was Dionysus. He wore a formal black suit, so Sylvie almost didn't recognize him, a deep purple tie and violet dress shirt, his curly dark hair carefully combed. His eyes were bloodshot as usual, and his pudgy face was flushed, but he looked like he was suffering from grief more than wine-withdrawal.

The satyrs all stood respectfully and bowed as he approached. Dionysus waved his hand, and a new chair grew out of the ground next to Silenus's—a throne made of grapevines.

Dionysus sat down and crossed his legs. He snapped his fingers and a satyr hurried forward with a plate of cheese and crackers and a Diet Coke.

The god of wine looked around at the assembled crowd. "Miss me?"

The satyrs fell over themselves nodding and bowing. "Oh, yes, very much, sire!"

"Well, I did not miss this place!" Dionysus snapped. "I bear bad new, my friends. Evil news. The minor gods are changing sides. Morpheus has gone over to the enemy. Hecate, Janus, and Nemesis, as well. Zeus knows how many more."

Thunder rumbled in the distance.

"Strike that," he said. "Even Zeus doesn't know—Now, I want to hear Grover's story. Again, from the top."

"But, my lord," Silenus protested. "It's just nonsense!"

Dionysus's eyes flared with purple fire. "I have just learned that my son Castor is dead, Silenus. I am not in a good mood. You would do well to humor me."

Silenus gulped and waved at Grover to start again.

When Grover was done, Mr. D nodded. "It sounds like just the sort of thing Pan would do. Grover is right. The search is tiresome. You must start thinking for yourselves." He turned to a satyr. "Bring me some peeled grapes, right away!"

"Yes, sire!" The satyr scampered off.

"We must exile the traitor!" Silenus insisted.

"I say no," Dionysus countered. "That is my vote."

"I vote no as well," Chiron put in.

Silenus set his jaw stubbornly. "All in favor of the exile?"

He and the two other old satyrs raised their hands.

"Three to two," Silenus said.

"Ah, yes," Dionysus. "But unfortunately for you, a god's vote counts twice. And as I voted against, we are tied."

Silenus stood, indignant. "This is an outrage! The council cannot stand at an impasse."

"Then let it be dissolved!" Mr. D said. "I don't care."

Silenus bowed stiffly, along with his two friends, and they left the grove. About twenty satyrs went with them. The rest stood around murmuring uncomfortably.

"Don't worry," Grover told them. "We don't need a council to tell us what to do. We can figure it out ourselves."

He told them again the words of Pan—how they must save the wild a little at a time. He started dividing the satyrs into groups—which ones would go to the national parks, which ones would search out the last wild places, which ones would defend the parks in big cities.

"Well," Annabeth said to Sylvie and Percy, "Grover seems to be growing up."

Later that afternoon Sylvie found Tyson at the beach, talking to Briares. Briares was building a sand castle with about fifty of his hands. He wasn't really paying attention to it, but his hands had constructed a three-story compound with fortified walls, a moat, and a drawbridge. Tyson was telling Briares how to get to the forges, because Briares finally decided to help. His plan was to teach Cyclopes things they forgot, like making better weapons and armor.

It felt good to have a regular dinner at camp. Even Florian left the cabin for the first time since they burned Castor's shroud. The light inside of him was obviously dimmed, but he still didn't want to let that stop him. That's what Sylvie admired about her big brother (don't tell him that), he always kept going.

The sunset over Long Island South was beautiful. Things weren't back to normal by a long shot, but when Sylvie went up to the brazier and scraped part of her meal into the flames as an offering to Demeter, she felt like she really did have a lot to be grateful for. Sylvie, her friends, and her family were alive. The camp was safe. Kronos had suffered a setback, at least for a while.

The only thing that bothered Sylvie was Nico, hanging out in the shadows at the edge of the pavilion. He'd been offered a place at the Hermes table, and even at the head table with Chiron, but he had refused.

After dinner, the campers headed toward the amphitheater, where Florian and Apollo's cabin promised an awesome sing-along to pick up their spirits, but Nico turned and disappeared into the woods. Percy followed after him, and Sylvie had sent him a silent question, asking if he wanted her to come with, but Percy sent her a wordless response back saying he should be fine.

When Sylvie tuned back in, she noticed a key detail that she'd been too preoccupied to notice before. Clarisse was sitting shoulder to shoulder with a big Hispanic kid who was telling her a joke. It was Chris Rodrigues, the half-blood who'd gone insane in the Labyrinth.

"Mr. D cured him earlier," Connor Stoll said, like he was reading Sylvie's thoughts.

Sylvie knit her eyebrows, looking away to stare at Hermes's other son. "Mr. D did? Like—Dionysus?"

Connor just nodded.

"Why'd he do something so... nice?"

He shrugged, breathing in the comforting air of the campfire and the music and the warm company. "Maybe it has to do with losing his son. He's still really upset about it."

That was right. Sylvie knew Castor was Dionysus's son, and she knew Dionysus was a constant presence at camp, but for some reason, she never imagined the gods actually cared about what happened to their children. Don't get Sylvie wrong—she's not about to pull a Eurydice and betray all of her loved ones—but to hear and see an immortal Olympian actually grieve for a child that they usually neglected... Maybe Sylvie was weird, but it warmed her heart a little; like seeing Mr. D care was giving her a reason to care, too.

She watched Clarisse and Chris singing a stupid campfire song together, holding hands in the darkness, where they thought nobody could see them, and Sylvie had to smile.

That smile only grew when Percy came back from the woods, sitting next to Sylvie and sending her a grin of his own.

╰━━━ ◦ ❀ ◦ ❀◦ ━━━╯

The rest of the summer seemed strange because it was so normal. The daily activities continued: archery, rock climbing, pegasus riding. They played capture the flag (though they all avoided Zeus's Fist). They sang at the campfire and raced chariots and played practical jokes on the other cabins. Sylvie spent a lot of her time with her siblings, Percy, Annabeth, Grover, Tyson, and the rest of her friends in the other cabins. Her relationship was the same with all of those listed, except Sylvie and Percy were pretty much skirting around each other. She was glad to be with him, but there was also too much tension, but it was kind of relieving, but it also kind of hurt, but it also hurt when she wasn't with him.

All in all, Sylvie was confused about where they stood with each other, and Percy was not giving her any hints.

The only big thing that happened relating to them was one day in July when Sylvie was confessing all of this uncertainty to Mickey:

"I mean, why don't you just ask him about it?" she had said.

Sylvie proceeded to shake her head wildly. "Absolutely not," she protested. "Because if I'm reading too much into things and just being that delusional little girl again, I'm gonna be so embarrassed for the rest of my life that I'll fall off a pegasus again. Purposefully this time. From a much larger height."

"Sylvie, I'm literally the daughter of Aphrodite," Mickey exhaled frustratedly. "Trust me: you're not reading too much into things."

She shot her a glare. "Why are you so insistent? A few weeks ago Phoenix had to hold you back from beating Percy to death."

"Because," Mickey leaned into the side of her arm, "he made it up to you, and he makes you happy again, and I can tell. So quit playing around each other and just start making out."

Sylvie's nose wrinkled, pushing her friend away. "Gross, Mickey. No."

"You're no fun," she sighed in disappointment.

"I still don't even know if he likes me!" Sylvie defended herself.

"You don't think anyone likes you, until they explicitly state it, and even then you still don't fully believe it."

A beat.

"Rude," Sylvie grumbled.

"Yeah, yeah, just admit I'm right," Mickey teased, grinning in a way that had Sylvie dropping her annoyed act and letting out an amused snort. "What if I made a deal with you?"

"A deal?" she sent Mickey a suspicious eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"How about this: if I make a move on Phoenix, then you have to make a move on Percy."

Sylvie thought about it, squinting at Pheonix in the distance—He was hanging out with Clarisse and Chris, but it was a docile thing that didn't involve any training or fighting.

Phoenix and Mickey have been a thing-but-not-a-thing for much longer than Percy and Sylvie ever had. Even before Sylvie became friends with Mickey (and Phoenix, she guessed). She had seen them come close to caving multiple times, but they never seemed to be able to. It was kind of an unspoken role between the two to just never comment on the tension between them.

So Sylvie looked back over at Mickey with a smug smile.

"Fine. Deal."

"Perfect," Mickey looked even more smug. For some reason, Sylvie had a terrible feeling in her gut when Mickey hopped off the wooden fence they'd been sitting atop of.

"Mickey," Sylvie panicked. "What are you doing?"

"This."

Then Mickey Hayes marched over to Phoenix Harden. Out of nowhere, she grabbed his face with her hands. Before any of Sylvie, Phoenix, Clarisse, or Chris knew it—Mickey kissed him right there in front of everyone.

Phoenix gathered his senses pretty quickly to kiss her right back.

So, yeah. Now, for the rest of the summer, Sylvie had to deal with not only Mickey and Phoenix being an obnoxious couple (Phoenix only went soft for Mickey, and she walked that boy around like he was on a leash), but also with Mickey in her ear every second telling Sylvie it was her turn to make a move on Percy. She refused to do it every time.

What? Mickey didn't make her swear upon the River Styx.

July passed, with fireworks on the beach on the Fourth. August turned so hot the strawberries started baking in the fields. Finally, the last day of camp arrived. The standard form letter appeared on Sylvie's bed after breakfast, warning her that the cleaning harpies would devour her if she stayed past noon.

At ten o'clock Sylvie stood on the top of Half-Blood Hill, waiting for Florian to finish packing his stuff up and meet her outside. Like always, she'd be picked up at the bottom of the hill with Florian by his father, and they would send her off on the airplane to Louisiana.

"So, back to the farm?" a voice asked.

Sylvie turned around. Percy was carrying all of his packed things as well—The camp van was going to drive him back to Manhattan, since he lived so much closer compared to kids like Sylvie.

"Yup," she inhaled, trying hard not to think about her dad and what sort of condition he could be in right now. "Back to see your mom?"

"Yup," Percy nodded.

Sylvie had no clue why they were asking these kinds of questions. Both of them knew the other was going back to their respective homes. It was redundant to even ask, and yet, they did. And then they just stood there in each other's presence, wanting to prolong the conversation but not knowing how.

Luckily Annabeth came over to show them off—For most of the summer, she had been acting as a buffer for Sylvie and Percy. Albeit, a really begrudging one who was in the same boat as Mickey in that she wanted the two of them to give in, but a buffer nonetheless. Annabeth said she'd arranged to stay at camp a little longer. She would tend to Chiron until his leg was fully recovered, and keep studying Daedalus's laptop, which had engrossed her for the last two months. Then she would head back to her father's place in San Francisco.

"There's a private school out there that I'll be going to," she said. "I'll probably hate it, but..." She shrugged.

"Yeah, well, keep in touch with us, yeah?" said Sylvie.

"Sure," she said half-heartedly. "I'll keep my eyes open for Eurydice and..."

Luke. Annabeth couldn't even say his name without opening up a huge box of hurt and worry and anger.

"Annabeth," Percy said. "What was the rest of the prophecy?"

She fixed her eyes on the woods in the distance, but she didn't say anything.

"You shall delve in the darkness of the endless maze," he remembered. "The dead, the traitor, and the lost one raise. We raised a lot of the dead. We saved Ethan Nakamura, who turned out to be a traitor. We raised the spirit of Pan, the lost one.

Annabeth shook her head like she wanted Percy to stop. Sylvie would've made him do it for Annabeth if Sylvie wasn't so curious herself.

"You shall rise or fall by the ghost king's hand," Sylvie recalled. "That wasn't Minos, like we'd thought. It was Nico. By choosing to be on our side, he saved us. And the child of Athena's final stand—that was Daedalus."

"Guys—"

"Destroy with a hero's final breath," said Percy. "That makes sense now. Deadalus died to destroy the Labyrinth. But what was the last—"

"And lose a love to worse than death." Annabeth had tears in her eyes. "That was the last line. Are you happy now?"

Sylvie side-glanced at nothing awkwardly. "...Not in particular, no."

"So," Percy looked confused. "So Luke—"

"I didn't know what the prophecy was talking about. I—I didn't know..." She faltered helplessly. "Luke and I—for years, he was the only one who really cared about me. I thought..."

Before she could continue, a sparkle of light appeared next to them, like someone had opened a gold curtain in the air.

"You have nothing to apologize for, my dear." Standing on the hill was a tall woman in a white dress, her dark hair braided over her shoulder.

"Hera," Annabeth said.

The goddess smiled. "You found the answers, as I knew you would. Your quest was a success."

"A success?" Annabeth said. "Luke is gone. Daedalus is dead. Pan is dead. How is that—"

"Our family is safe," Hera insisted. "Those others are better gone, my dear. I am proud of you."

Sylvie balled her fists. She couldn't believe Hera was saying this.

"You're the one who paid Geryon to let us through the ranch, weren't you?" asked Percy, voice angry.

Hera shrugged. Her dress shimmered in rainbow colors. "I wanted to speed you on your way."

"But you didn't care about Nico. You were happy to see him turned over to the Titans."

"Oh, please." Hera waved her hand dismissively. "The son of Hades said it himself. No one wants him around. He does not belong."

"Hephaestus was right," Sylvie growled. "You only care about your perfect family, not real people."

Her eyes turned dangerously bright. "I'm going to make you wish you never said that, daughter of Demeter. I warned you once before, but you have continued to push my buttons and proven to be just as insufferable as your father," Hera snapped. "I guided you more than you know in the maze. I was at your side when you faced Geryon. I let your arrow fly straight. I sent Percy to Calypso's island. I opened the way to the Titan's mountain. Annabeth, my dear, surely you see how I've helped. I would welcome a sacrifice for my efforts."

Annabeth stood still as a statue. She clenched her jaw stubbornly. She looked just the way that Sylvie did right now.

"Sylvie is right." She turned her back on the goddess. "You're the one who doesn't belong, Queen Hera. So next time, thanks... but no thanks."

Hera's sneer was worse than an empousa's. Her form began to glow. "You will regret this insult, Annabeth. And you, Silviana. You both will regret this very much."

Sylvie averted her eyes as the goddess turned into her true divine form and disappeared in a blaze of light.

The hilltop was peaceful again. Over at the pine tree, Peleus the dragon dozed under the Golden Fleece as if nothing had happened.

"Why the fuck did I just do that?" Sylvie panicked, as if her actions had just dawned on her. "Guys. Guys? Why the fuck did you just let me do that?!"

Percy just blinked. "Uhh..."

"Hera's going to kill me," she worried. "I'm going to be killed. By Hera. Why is no one else acknowledging this?"

Annabeth just sighed. She didn't seem to care as much as Sylvie did.

"I should get back," Annabeth decided. "Take care, you two. I'll keep in touch."

She jogged down the other side of the hill and didn't stop until she reached the cabins.

And then it was just Sylvie and Percy again. Sylvie was suddenly regretting more than just sassing Hera.

Sylvie could feel Percy's stare on her, but she chose to keep her daze perfectly directed towards a tree a couple of feet away.

"Listen, Sylv—"

But then Percy stopped himself, and Sylvie didn't know why. Sylvie thought about how suddenly everything had gotten so complicated. A part of her wanted to say she didn't really want to be so distant from Percy, but in the end, her fatal flaw overruled. Her timidity kept her quiet.

"Henriette, you ready?"

Sylvie turned towards Percy finally, but it was only to look behind him. She saw that Florian had finally come out of Cabin 4.

"I'd better get going," Sylvie swallowed, not quite meeting Percy's eyes.

"Uh—Okay," Percy stammered. "I-I'll talk to... You'll call me?"

He said it with hope in his voice. It caught Sylvie's notice, and the tension in her shoulders dropped, if even a little bit.

"Yeah, Perce," she grinned. "I'll call you."

╰━━━ ◦ ❀ ◦ ❀◦ ━━━╯

BAILEY YAPS...

WE'RE DONE WITH ACT 3?!?!?!? THE LAST ACT OF THIS BOOK IS NEXT???? I have no clue how Sylvie got this old like Hello if this is the long haul how'd we get here so soon

Once again I tell you thank you so much for reading this and that I love you because it's true and once again I tell you Sylvie loves you even more

Thank you for putting up with Sylvie's emo angsty era this act I really appreciate it

Anyways some good stuff got cooked up here HI CANON MICKEY AND PHOENIX I HAVE NO CLUE WHAT YOUR SHIP NAME IS BUT I'LL LOVE YOU REGARDLESS!!!

Hi tension Persylv you arrived just in time for Act 4

The Last Olympian here we come :'((((