Pluto spread his hands in a pleading gesture. “Marie, please—”
“No!” Queen Marie turned to the closet, pulled out a leather valise, and threw it on the table. “We’re leaving,” she announced. “You can keep your protection. We’re going north.”
“Marie, it’s a trap,” Pluto warned. “Whoever’s whispering in your ear, whoever’s turning you against me—”
“You turned me against you!” She picked up a porcelain vase and threw it at him. It shattered on the floor, and precious stones spilled everywhere—emeralds, rubies, diamonds. Hazel’s entire collection.
“You won’t survive,” Pluto said. “If you go north, you’ll both die. I can foresee that clearly.”
“Get out!” she said.
Hazel wished Pluto would stay and argue. Whatever her mother was talking about, Hazel didn’t like it. But her father slashed his hand across the air and dissolved into shadows…like he really was a spirit.
Queen Marie closed her eyes. She took a deep breath. Hazel was afraid the strange voice might possess her again. But when she spoke, she was her regular self.
“Hazel,” she snapped, “come out from behind that door.”
Trembling, Hazel obeyed. She clutched the sketchpad and colored pencils to her chest.
Her mother studied her like she was a bitter disappointment. A poisoned child, the voices had said.
“Pack a bag,” she ordered. “We’re moving.”
“Wh-where?” Hazel asked.
“Alaska,” Queen Marie answered. “You’re going to make yourself useful. We’re going to start a new life.”
The way her mother said that, it sounded as if they were going to create a “new life” for someone else—or something else.
“What did Pluto mean?” Hazel asked. “Is he really my father? He said you made a wish—”
“Go to your room!” her mother shouted. “Pack!”
Hazel fled, and suddenly she was ripped out of the past.
Nico was shaking her shoulders. “You did it again.”
Hazel blinked. They were still sitting on the roof of Pluto’s shrine. The sun was lower in the sky. More diamonds had surfaced around her, and her eyes stung from crying.
“S-sorry,” she murmured.
“Don’t be,” Nico said. “Where were you?”
“My mother’s apartment. The day we moved.”
Nico nodded. He understood her history better than most people could. He was also a kid from the 1940s. He’d been born only a few years after Hazel, and had been locked away in a magic hotel for decades. But Hazel’s past was much worse than Nico’s. She’d caused so much damage and misery.…
“You have to work on controlling those memories,” Nico warned. “If a flashback like that happens when you’re in combat—”
“I know,” she said. “I’m trying.”
Nico squeezed her hand. “It’s okay. I think it’s a side effect from…you know, your time in the Underworld. Hopefully it’ll get easier.”
Hazel wasn’t so sure. After eight months, the blackouts seemed to be getting worse, as if her soul were attempting to live in two different time periods at once. No one had ever come back from the dead before—at least, not the way she had. Nico was trying to reassure her, but neither of them knew what would happen.
“I can’t go north again,” Hazel said. “Nico, if I have to go back to where it happened—”
“You’ll be fine,” he promised. “You’ll have friends this time. Percy Jackson—he’s got a role to play in this. You can sense that, can’t you? He’s a good person to have at your side.”
Hazel remembered what Pluto told her long ago: A descendant of Neptune will wash away your curse and give you peace.
Was Percy the one? Maybe, but Hazel sensed it wouldn’t be so easy. She wasn’t sure even Percy could survive what was waiting in the north.
“Where did he come from?” she asked. “Why do the ghosts call him the Greek?”
Before Nico could respond, horns blew across the river. The legionnaires were gathering for evening muster.
“We’d better get down there,” Nico said. “I have a feeling tonight’s war games are going to be interesting.”
ON THE WAY BACK, HAZEL TRIPPED OVER A GOLD BAR.
She should have known not to run so fast, but she was afraid of being late for muster. The Fifth Cohort had the nicest centurions in camp. Still, even they would have to punish her if she was tardy. Roman punishments were harsh: scrubbing the streets with a toothbrush, cleaning the bull pens at the coliseum, getting sewn inside a sack full of angry weasels and dumped into the Little Tiber—the options were not great.
The gold bar popped out of the ground just in time for her foot to hit it. Nico tried to catch her, but she took a spill and scraped her hands.
“You okay?” Nico knelt next to her and reached for the bar of gold.
“Don’t!” Hazel warned.