The lake was quiet. Too quiet.

Percy sat at the edge of the dock, sneakers kicked off, feet dipping below the surface of the water. The sun had long since fallen behind the horizon. The air smelled like pine and salt, like home and heartbreak.

Annabeth was gone.

Not gone-gone. She was still at camp, probably in the Athena cabin, probably pretending she was fine. Maybe she was. Maybe she’d been fine for a while now.

“I just don’t think we’re… us anymore,” she’d said, voice steady, eyes not quite meeting his. “We’ve been through so much, but maybe that’s all we were—two people surviving the same war.”

He hadn’t argued. Not really. What could he say? That he still dreamed of her voice calling his name in Tartarus? That he still reached for her hand in the dark?

A breeze stirred the surface of the lake, sending ripples out over the moon’s reflection.

He could still hear her voice. Not the one from the breakup, but the one from a hundred other moments. Laughing in the Athena cabin, whispering plans in the dark, shouting orders in battle. The voice that had pulled him back from the edge more times than he could count.

“I thought we’d be forever,” he whispered.