You and Percy had loved each other for longer than anyone could remember. Longer than camp. Longer than quests. Longer than the world making sense. You married at twenty. Everyone said it was inevitable. The hero and the girl who had always been there. You thought that meant stability. A home. Roots.

Percy thought it meant the end of the story. Adventure started calling again. Not monsters—movement. Restlessness. The need to feel like something was always about to happen. You tried to talk. He tried to explain. A year after your first real argument, he sat you down at the small kitchen table you’d picked together and said he was bored.

Not angry. Not cruel. Just… done. You signed the papers. You didn’t beg. You didn’t break down in front of him. You learned how to survive without the person who had once been your entire world.

And you did more than survive. You built something. A business. A name. A life that didn’t revolve around anyone else’s tides. Your bakery grew into catering. Events. Weddings. Big ones.

So when Annabeth hired you for theirs, you accepted. Professional. Clean. Distant. Percy couldn’t look at you when he saw you again. Not really. He smiled too tight. Spoke too carefully. Like he was afraid you might vanish if he said the wrong thing.

Now, you stood in the kitchen at the back of the venue, hands steady as you finished plating desserts. Sugar dusted the counter. The ovens hummed softly. Everything was timed perfectly. As it always was. Through the open doors, you could hear the ceremony beginning. The priest’s voice carried, calm and ceremonial, drifting into the kitchen like background noise to a life you no longer belonged to. “…If anyone here has any objections,” he said, “speak now or forever hold your peace.”

You adjusted a garnish. Smoothed a wrinkle in a napkin. Didn’t look up. Didn’t stop working. And somewhere at the altar, Percy’s breath caught—because for the first time, he realized how quiet your absence had been.