Page 41 of The Court of the Dead (The Nico di Angelo Adventures #2)

White-hot hatred surged through him—for Pirithous and his court, for all the misery they’d caused.

A ripped sleeve was nothing compared to losing Hazel, of course.

But this jacket had been with him through so many adventures.

It had come out unscathed every time. Until now. It seemed like a bad omen.

Nico fought back tears.

She isn’t dead , he told himself. And jackets can be mended.

But that just made him think of Asterion and his knitting needles, which made him even sadder.

He headed outside, leaving his Cocoa Puffs snoozing on Will’s bunk.

It was early in the evening. The last rays of sunlight stretched over the Via Principalis.

The camp felt strangely empty. Nico supposed dinner had already happened.

Maybe the cohorts were off training or hunkered down in their barracks.

The few campers he passed froze when they saw him, as if torn between wanting to say something and wanting to run away.

Nico spared them the choice. He kept walking, his eyes fixed on the mess hall.

Word of Hazel’s fate must have spread through the legion by now.

Did they blame Nico for not saving her?

He heard Mr. D’s voice in his mind, reminding him to stay in the present. Don’t think about the past you can’t change. Don’t leap forward to a future you can’t predict.

The mess hall was empty except for a few wind spirits cleaning up from dinner, but the scent of roast beef still lingered in the air.

Despite all his problems, Nico’s mouth watered.

He headed to the galley and managed to liberate some leftovers—a roast beef sandwich, some chips, and an apple (because healthy).

He headed for the praetors’ table, though the sight of Hazel’s empty chair made him tear up again.

He sat down, and then took a deep breath. “She isn’t dead,” he said aloud this time.

“Are you sure?” said a voice at his ear.

Nico flinched.

It was Semele, of course. As Nico steadied his jumpy nerves, he thought how fortunate the eidolon was to be non-corporeal. If she’d had a physical form, she would’ve gotten an elbow in the face several times a day, the way she liked to sneak up on people.

“Semele,” he said. “Sorry. I’m…a little jumpier than usual.”

“Apologies, my child.” Her smoky essence drifted to the right, taking the spot where Will usually sat. “I was hoping to find you.”

Nico took a bite of his sandwich. “I assume someone told you what happened.”

“Your boyfriend did,” she confirmed, her voice heavy. “We were just speaking in the principia with Frank. He thinks Hazel is alive. Do you?”

Nico’s heart ached yet again. On top of everything else, he’d slept through the day, putting the burden on Will to explain what had happened and deal with the reactions from Frank and the rest of the legion. Gods…Frank must be devastated.

“I’m not sure what to believe,” Nico said. “As a child of Hades, I can usually sense when someone I care about has died. But with Hazel, I don’t feel that. So maybe…” He didn’t finish, not wanting to jinx anything.

“Will Solace believes the same thing,” Semele said. “That Hazel is still alive somehow. And what of Asterion?”

Nico frowned. Another thing to feel guilty about—it hadn’t even occurred to him to try to sense the bull-man’s death.

Could he sense the passing of a mythic? Their essence would return to Tartarus, which wasn’t exactly like a soul being sent to Erebos, his father’s kingdom.

And then there was the fact that Pirithous had claimed Asterion would be executed in a way that prevented him from ever regenerating. How could that be?

He closed his eyes and tried to find Asterion. He remembered the bull-man’s gentle hug on his last night in camp, his dignified attitude before the court, and yes, even the pride he had taken in his hand-knitted underwear.

Nico sensed nothing.

He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know. I don’t suppose…” He was hesitant to get Semele’s hopes up, but he decided to ask anyway. “That little patch of Tartarus ground you have growing in your quarters…?”

“Alas, no.” Semele sighed. “We checked it as soon as we heard, to see if perhaps Asterion’s essence had lodged within it, waiting to regrow. But our small piece of home is still struggling to take root in the upper world. We are not even certain it will survive.”

Nico wasn’t surprised, but the news made his sandwich sit uneasily in his gut.

“I want to believe Hazel and Asterion are alive,” he said. “But if so, where are they?”

“I do not know,” said the eidolon. “But I would like to offer the services of those of us who remain. Orcus, Johan, myself…We will help you.”

He raised an eyebrow, surprised at the change in Semele’s attitude. Only a day ago, she’d been ready to leave camp and take her chances in the wider world.

“That’s…Thank you, Semele,” he said. “I just wish I knew how you could help.”

“We will discover this together,” she said.

Then she hesitated. “I regret that I was so ready to leave. I am sorry to have spoken harshly to Asterion. I have many doubts, Nico di Angelo. After living as long as I have, I cannot but fear the worst from others. But Asterion gave me hope , which I have not felt in centuries. I have not been allowed this level of independence in a long, long time.”

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—that has to 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 said Don’t believe it .”

Will and Frank exchanged a look. Clearly, they’d already been discussing this.

“Before that,” Frank said, “this judge Pirithous…He said Asterion and Hazel would be”—he grimaced—“executed in a way that helped their plan?”

“Whatever that means,” Nico agreed. “And in a way that they wouldn’t be able to come back from.”