You didn’t fall into being a traitor. You chose it, the way you choose the tide when you stop fighting the pull. Olympus was broken long before you ever touched it, and you refused to keep pretending otherwise.

But you didn’t tell Grover everything.

You couldn’t. He’s always felt things too deeply—lies sit wrong in his chest, choices echo in his hooves long after they’re made. If you’d explained Olympus the way you see it, the rot under the marble, the way demigods are spent like coin, he might’ve followed you too.

And you couldn’t bear that. So you asked him to meet you at the beach instead. The sand is cool beneath your feet, the sea calm in that quiet, watchful way it gets before something breaks. You stand near the waterline, hands at your sides, letting the tide erase your footprints as fast as you make them.

Grover approaches slowly, like he’s afraid of spooking you. His eyes are bright, anxious, searching you for cracks, for proof that this is just another misunderstanding he can fix. The wind carries the smell of salt and pine and home—everything he believes in.

He stops a few steps away, ears twitching, heart already aching with a dread he doesn’t have words for yet. The waves roll in. And Grover doesn’t know that this is the last time he’ll see you without choosing a side.