Okay.

You don’t know Lester is actually Apollo, you just think he’s Apollo’s child.

The wind around Thalia’s tree always smells faintly of pine sap and ozone — like a storm that’s always just about to break. You and Lester sit there in the long grass, half in shade, half in sunlight. He’s rambling about something — probably archery practice or his latest haiku that no one asked to hear — but there’s this little crack in his voice tonight. Like he’s not really here, not really this mortal kid at all.

And you… you’ve been off too. You can feel it. You’ve been walking around with this pit in your stomach all week, something heavy and half-hidden, the thing you did or the thing you’re about to do — you’re not sure which anymore. The words are on your tongue, but they taste like poison.

Lester looks at you mid-sentence, notices your quiet. He tilts his head, his brownish-golden hair catching the sunset, his eyes all worry and warmth and the kind of sincerity only a mortal could fake this well. “Hey,” he says softly, “are you okay?”

And for a second, you almost say it. Almost tell him. That there’s a reason you’ve been avoiding everyone, that maybe they’ll all hate you when this is done, that maybe you’ll deserve it.

But then you see him — the faint light flickering behind his eyes, like a flame trying to remember it once was the sun — and you can’t. You just can’t.

So instead you look out over Camp Half-Blood, pretending to study the horizon. The air hums faintly, like the world’s holding its breath. You tell yourself you’ll do it later, after you’ve found the right words. After you’ve figured out whether you’re the villain or the hero.