Nico wished he could see Semele’s face…if eidolons had faces. Her voice reminded him of his nonna in Venice, almost a century before. Nico remembered little about his grandmother’s face, but he knew she’d lived through wars, famines, and plagues. She’d seen entire nations rise and fall. She’d lost her husband, three of her children, and her home four times to floods, bombs, and fire. And yet just before Nico left for the United States, with the storm clouds of World War II on the horizon, she had hugged him fiercely and said, “Ce la farai.” A simple statement, difficult to translate into English:You will make it. You will manage. You will be able to handle it.Somehow, she’d had absolute faith that Nico would be okay.
Semele spoke with that same tone—a combination of sorrow and steel—and the eidolon had been alive for thousands of years longer than his nonna.
“Can I ask you something?” Nico said. “When we first met, you said you hadn’t possessed anyone in a long time. What made you stop?”
Semele’s smoke swirled and twisted. “Gaea used us as tools. We eidolons did her bidding and nothing else. After centuries upon centuries of subjugation, I lost touch with who I was.”
She drifted across the table like a miniature fog bank, settling over Hazel’s chair. “Possessing someone is not as simple as changing places, Nico di Angelo, or putting on a costume. When an eidolon inhabits another person’s body, we lose a bit of ourselves. We become weaker, more diluted, less visible. It is…the price we pay.”
Nico shivered. He’d always thought of possession as a kind of violation—a power move by an evil spirit over a helpless victim. He’d never considered that it also diminished the possessor.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t imagine what that’s like.”
“But you are helping, Nico. Every day that I make choices for myself, I become more myself.”
He couldn’t see Semele, but he imagined her smiling. He wondered what the Court of the Dead would say about her “official record.” She had chosen not to be a pawn of the gods, not to do the one thing eidolons were created to do. But that was making her more truly herself…whoever she had been when she lived as a mortal.
“Do you remember your life?” he asked.
“Mmm. It is more like the memory of a memory…a groove I have worn in my mind. I do not know if that makes sense.”
Nico nodded. He’d worn a few grooves in his mind, too.
“I was once royalty,” she said. “The details are fuzzy, but I know I became too proud of my beauty and power. I demanded something of Zeus himself, and…it did not go well. Someday, perhaps, if I regain enough of who I was, I will ask forgiveness of the person I hurt the most—my son.”
Nico wasn’t sure he’d understood her correctly. Her son?
Before he could ask, the doors of the mess hall creaked open.
“Ah,” said Semele. “Your boyfriend and Praetor Zhang have arrived.”
Sure enough, Will and Frank were making their way toward him. They both looked exhausted. Will’s shoulders drooped. Frank had bags under his eyes.
“Hey, Nico,” Frank said, collapsing in the nearest chair. “Hope you got some sleep.”
He sounded glum and angry at the world, but not devastated, at least. Will must have shared his theory that Hazel was still alive.
Will kissed the top of Nico’s head and then sat next to him. “We have some things to discuss with you.”
Uh-oh, thought Nico. Out loud he said, “Yeah, Semele and I were just talking.”
“Good evening, demigods,” said Semele. “Have you made any progress on your plan?”
Nico looked to Will. “You have a plan?”
“A potential one,” said Will. “Assuming, well—”
“Hazel is alive,” Nico said. “She has to be.”
Will nodded. “What she said at the end—thathasto mean something.”
Frank rubbed his eyes. “You have no idea how much I want that to be true, but I need to hear every detail—Nico, from your point of view this time.”
Nico recounted what had happened in the courtroom. It was hard not to choke up as he described how Asterion and Hazel had been reduced to ashes.
“She told us to go,” Nico said. “And at the very end, she saidDon’t believe it.”
Will and Frank exchanged a look. Clearly, they’d already been discussing this.
