The Titan's Promise

The first thing I noticed was that the sky was the wrong color.

Not wrong like a storm coming, or wrong like sunset bleeding through smog. Wrong like someone had taken the normal blue of a Tuesday afternoon and stirred in a drop of something that didn't belong. A bruise-color. A color that made the hairs on my arms stand up even before I understood why.

I was sitting on the fire escape of my apartment building, which sounds more dramatic than it was. The fire escape was really just a rusted metal platform outside my bedroom window, barely wide enough for a folding chair and a bag of chips. I'd been up there for an hour, skipping stones across the rooftops with my mind, which is a thing I do when I'm bored and trying not to think about the fact that I'm bored. The stones never actually move. That's not one of my talents. But I like to imagine the trajectory anyway, the perfect arc, the satisfying skip-skip-skip before they disappear over the edge.

Annabeth would tell me that's a waste of mental energy. She'd probably be right.

The bruise-color spread from the west, creeping over the Hudson like oil on water. I watched it for a long moment, waiting for the familiar rush of adrenaline that usually came with weird stuff. It didn't come. Instead I felt something colder, something that settled in my chest like a stone dropped into deep water. A slow sinking.

I climbed back through my window and grabbed my backpack. Old habits.

My mom was in the kitchen, stirring something that smelled like garlic and tomatoes. She looked up when I came in, and I saw her eyes do the thing they do, the quick scan, the cataloging of my face for signs of trouble.

"You're going out," she said. It wasn't a question.

"Yeah."

She didn't ask where. She never did anymore. That was the deal we'd made without ever actually making it, after the second time I disappeared for three days and came back with a scar on my shoulder and no good explanation. She stirred the sauce. I grabbed a granola bar from the counter.

"Be careful," she said.

"Always am."

She made a sound that was half laugh, half something else. I was out the door before I could hear the rest of it.

The street was quiet in that way New York gets quiet sometimes, like the city is holding its breath. A few people walked their dogs. A delivery truck idled at the corner. Everything looked normal. But the sky was still that wrong color, and now I could feel it too. A pressure behind my eyes. A hum in my teeth.

I walked fast, heading toward the park. I didn't know why. My feet just seemed to know where to go, and I've learned to trust that instinct. It's saved my life more times than I can count. It's also gotten me into more trouble than I can count, so maybe trust isn't the right word. Maybe it's more like a bad habit I can't shake.

The park was mostly empty. A few joggers. A woman with a stroller. I found a bench near the pond and sat down, pulling out my phone like I was just another teenager killing time. I wasn't. I was counting exits. I was mapping the fastest route to the trees. I was doing all the things I do when I'm pretending to be normal.

That's when I saw her.

Annabeth was walking toward me from the east side of the park, and she was moving like she had somewhere to be. Her blonde hair was pulled back, and she was wearing jeans and a gray t-shirt that had a hole in the sleeve. She looked exactly like she always looked, which is to say she looked like she was ready for a fight and also like she hadn't slept in two days.

She sat down next to me without saying hello.

"Nice weather," I said.

"Shut up."

"Good to see you too."

She turned to look at me, and I saw it then. The thing I'd been feeling, the cold stone in my chest, it was in her eyes too. She was scared. Annabeth Chase, who had faced down monsters and gods and the literal end of the world, was scared.

"The sky," I said.

"You see it too."

"Yeah."

She nodded slowly, like she'd been hoping I wouldn't. Like maybe if I hadn't seen it, she could pretend it wasn't real. But we both knew better. We'd spent too many years pretending things weren't real, and it had never worked once.

"Chiron sent an Iris message," she said. "Half the camp is down with something. Not sick exactly. Just... wrong. They're sleeping and they won't wake up. And the ones who are awake keep saying the same thing over and over."

"What thing?"

She looked at the pond. A duck paddled past, oblivious.

"They're saying 'he's coming back.'"

The words hung in the air between us. I wanted to ask who. I didn't. I already knew. There was only one person who could make the sky turn that color. Only one person whose return would make half of Camp Half-Blood fall into a sleep they couldn't wake from.

"Kronos," I said.

"I don't know." Annabeth's voice was tight. "Maybe. Or maybe something worse."

"There's nothing worse."

She didn't argue. That scared me more than the sky.

We sat there for a while, watching the ducks and the joggers and the woman with the stroller, all of them going about their lives like the world wasn't tilting under their feet. I thought about my mom in the kitchen, stirring her sauce. I thought about the granola bar in my backpack that I hadn't eaten. I thought about all the times I'd almost died and all the times Annabeth had saved me and all the times I'd saved her, and how none of that would matter if we couldn't figure out what was happening.

"We need to go to camp," I said.

"I know."

"You don't want to."

"No." She finally looked at me again. "But I will."

That was Annabeth. She would walk into hell if it was the right thing to do. She'd done it before. She'd do it again. And I'd follow her, because that's what we did. We followed each other into the dark.

I stood up and offered her my hand. She took it.

"Together?" I said.

She didn't answer right away. She looked at the sky, at the bruise-color spreading over the city, and I saw her jaw tighten. I saw her make a decision.

"Together," she said.

We walked out of the park, heading north, and the sky got darker with every step.