[alea iacta est]

Tessa had seen some pretty weird things in her lifetime. As a demigod, seeing weird things went with the job description. From Apollo driving a mini-van in the sky to herself in another dimension leading an enemy army, there had been quite a few instances were Tessa had been rendered speechless.

But this? This might have taken the cake.

Adam Bennet blinked at Tessa in bewilderment as the revolving door to Nectar & Ambrosia sputtered to a stop behind him. "Tessa? Is that really you?"

Tessa swallowed, forcing herself to speak. She could have said something witty or casual but somehow, all she could do was point weakly to the sign in the window and say, "We're closed."

Adam only grew more frantic. "What the hell is going on here, Tessa? You haven't come into work in days, the city is headed to hell in a handbasket." He gestured frantically, stammering. "What's going on?"

Tessa glanced to Reese at her side, who had one hand frozen towards his bow, strung across his back. He met Tessa's eyes and simply shrugged as if to say, this is on you. She turned back to Adam, only to find that he had followed her line of sight.

"Why does he have a bow?" Adam exclaimed, eyes wide.

"Adam!" Tessa interjected, snagging his attention. Her heart was racing; she had never exactly done this before, in all her years of being a half-blood. "Calm down."

"I'll calm down when I get some answers." Adam countered, phone in hand. "There's no reason that guy should be armed—"

"He's at war," Tessa said, running out of patience. "We all are."

Adam froze, meeting Tessa's gaze. She could practically see the gears turning in his head and coming up empty. "What war?"

Tessa took a deep breath. "Adam, what do you know about the Greek and Roman gods?"

Adam arched an eyebrow. "A fair amount. I have a minor in Classical Civilizations from NYU—"

"Not the point," Reese retorted, spooking Adam. Everytime Adam looked at him, it was like he forgot Reese was there and armed. "Listen to her."

"The short version is that the Greek and Roman gods are real, and they have moved with the flame of Western Civilization over the past three thousand years. They're currently in the United States, and sometimes, these gods have children with mortals called half-bloods. I'm one of them, and so is Reese." Tessa explained, her words cutting into one another.

Adam watched her with narrow eyes. For about a minute, he didn't say anything and Tessa thought he was going to sprint out into the street and scream for the number to a mental institution. But then he said something Tessa didn't expect.

"So I'm not crazy," Adam muttered.

Tessa made a face. "Why would you be crazy?"

Adam shook his head. "All my life I've seen...weird things. Men with one eye. Horses with wings. Young women that become trees or sit at the bottom of lakes and rivers. I thought I was just hallucinating or that I had a strong imagination. That's why I became an English major at first, actually, but I figured I liked journalism bet—"

"Focus, dude," Reese folded his arms across his chest. "We don't have all day."

"Right," Adam said, shaking his head as if to clear his train of thought. When he looked back up at Tessa, it was with a newfound intrigue. "So...you're really a half-blood? Both of you?"

Tessa nodded. "I'm the daughter of Poseidon and Reese is the son of Apollo."

Adam's eyes widened. "How do you...y'know, know?"

"There are two camps for demigods in the country. There's Camp Half-Blood on Long Island for Greek demigods and Camp Jupiter in California for Roman demigods, and you're claimed once you attend." Tessa said, glancing at the clock. They were borderline close to running behind schedule—

"So that's that summer-camp you mention at the gala! That's where you learn to fight?" Adam asked.

"Er, yes," Tessa said, suddenly antsy. "But, Adam, listen. There's a Titan, Menoetius, and he's hellbent on destroying the city and the rest of the world and humanity as we know it. All of the riots and fights and explosions that have been happening are because of him. We've been at war for days."

"But how has the government not intervened?" Adam insisted. "They've declared a state of national security but it's like they can't see what's happening."

"That's because they can't," Reese explained. "The Mist keeps mortals from seeing the mystical: gods, monsters, and the like. Sometimes, some mortals can see through it, like you. This whole war has just looked like an increase in violence thanks to Menoetius, who you must know as Alderman Rainier."

Adam's eyes nearly bugged out of his head. "What?!"

"Adam!" Tessa exclaimed, her voice suddenly shrill. "I understand that you must have a lot of questions, but I wasn't kidding when I said we're at war and if Reese and I don't leave now, then lots of people are going to die."

Myself included, Tessa wanted to add, but bit her tongue.

Adam nodded. "Right, right, sorry. I just...how do you plan on beating him?"

"The Curse of Achilles," Tessa said before she could think.

Adam made a face, as if he had a problem with the plan. "Are you sure?"

Reese turned his head slowly to look at Adam. "Do you have a better idea, mortal?"

Adam ignored Reese's comment. "I thought you needed a parent's blessing to get the curse. A mortal parent's blessing."

Tessa felt all of the adrenaline suddenly seep from her veins. Right. How had she forgotten that?

"And last you mentioned, your mom's been in Chicago for the past few months." Adam continued, glancing between Tessa and Reese as if to confirm his beliefs.

Tessa cursed under her breath, looking to Reese. "Is there anyway to get to Chicago?"

"You could fly," Adam offered.

Tessa and Reese ignored him.

"Unless we get Kaya or Amelie to make a portal for us," Reese shook his head, a stony expression on his face. He didn't like this oversight either.

"What about the Chariot of Damnation?" Tessa asked.

"The what?" Adam squawked.

"It only operates in New York and the surrounding area." Reese shook his head.

Tessa bit back another curse, her heart suddenly racing. Without the Achilles Curse, she wouldn't be able to go ahead with the rest of their plan.

"Can't your dad give us another ride in the Sun Chariot?" Tessa asked. "He got us from Chicago to Yellowstone during the quest!"

Reese opened his mouth to undoubtedly shoot her plan down, but then his expression changed. He got the same stormy look in his eyes that Tessa recognized from strategy meetings, when he was deliberating potential plans and outcomes.

"We don't need a ride anywhere," Reese said. He met Tessa's panicked gaze. "Tessa, you don't need the Curse."

Tessa's eyes widened nearly as wide as Adam's had earlier. "What? But—"

"I know, you need protection from Menoetius, but I think I know something that'll do the trick without the burden." Reese's eyes lit up.

Before Tessa could ask him to explain his spontaneous, undoubtedly crazy plan, the elevator doors slid open and Dale, Mark, and Eli came rushing out.

"Mortal!" Mark pointed at Adam the way one would a spider. "How'd he get in here?"

Adam made a feeble attempt to point to the front door but was suddenly bound by vines. Dale had spared no time in assuming Adam was an enemy, some kind of traitorous mortal who could see through the Mist and bound him to the wall with vines. Meanwhile, Eli grabbed the nearest weapon—a butterknife—and pointed it at Adam.

Adam struggled against his new confines. "What the hell?"

"Guys!" Tessa exclaimed. "He's not a threat. Let him go."

"Well, why didn't he just say so?" Dale said, dusting off her hands. The vines responded and dissolved into nothing.

Reese caught Tessa's attention before she could dish out the firestorm, nodding subtly towards the door while tapping his watch. We need to go.

Tessa started, glancing back to the mess before her. "Uh, well, Adam! Dale, Mark, and Eli can catch you up while we're gone, can't they?"

"W-what?" Eli stammered. "Catch him up on what?"

"Right!" Tessa said cheerfully, speeding up. "Bye, now!" And with that, she and Reese made an all-out sprint out the door.

~~

"Are you sure this is going to work?" Tessa asked.

"I never said it would, but I didn't say it wouldn't, either." Reese chided as they walked through downtown.

"Oh, perfect," Tessa grumbled, eyeing the sparse pedestrians still bumbling down the street. New Yorkers, as wonderful as they could be, were New Yorkers through and through; if they could find a way around an inconvenience, they would.

Tessa and Reese came to a stop outside a Starbucks, already teeming with people despite it being the crack of dawn. Reese marched inside, leaving Tessa to hurry after him. As she wove past customers and baristas, Tessa wondered what kind of plan Reese had up his sleeve. Did he think that a latte was going to make her invincible? But before she could demand an answer, Reese slowed to a stop at a small table in the back of the coffee shop.

Seated at the table was a young man in a button-up and slacks, a coffee cup in his hands and an empty one on the table. His bright eyes—blue like a summer sky—skimmed the laptop screen before him at lightning speed, reading words of what Tessa would later decipher as Ancient Greek. Every now and again, he'd run a frantic hand through his golden hair, but the movement wouldn't disturb the style. He looked like he'd work at some tech startup or bank in the city.

It wasn't until the young man looked up at Tessa and Reese when she recognized his face as if the sun had come out from behind the clouds.

"Lord Apollo," Tessa said as if it were a fact. She tried to shake the confusion from her face, looking back to Reese in bewilderment. "This is your plan?"

Reese elbowed Tessa ever so subtly as he dropped his head into a makeshift bow. "Father."

Apollo seemed shell-shocked, his Starbucks cup halfway to his lips and yet forgotten. He jolted, setting it down and clearing his throat. "What are you both doing here?"

"We need your help," Reese said. "It could change the course of this war."

At the mention of the war, Apollo's expression (ironically) darkened. He glanced over his shoulders, at the wall of windows near the front door before averting his attention back to Reese and Tessa. "I'm listening."

Awkwardly, Reese and Tessa sank into seats opposite Apollo. Tessa remembered the last time she'd seen the god of the sun: back on her quest when she was sixteen, when he'd driven them to Yellowstone after the attack on her home in Illinois.

"Shouldn't you be manning your chariot?" Tessa asked before she could stop herself.

Apollo let out a wry laugh that betrayed the melancholy look in his blue eyes. "If only, my dear. I'm afraid this war has left Olympus busy. Some of our duties have slipped from us in an attempt to slow Typhon down. Not to mention that thanks to your spats with the Romans, some of us are incapacitated, overwhelmed with pain and strife." He paused, managing a thin smile. "Sorry about that. I don't normally vent to half-bloods."

"Father," Reese interjected. "We need your Arrow."

Apollo's expression shifted from melancholy to bewildered. "What? Why?"

Reese explained the plan as swiftly as he could to his father, who listened intently. When Reese was finished, Apollo leant back in his chair, as if faced with an impossible decision.

"You know, Zeus only allows me to make these early morning coffee runs because they keep me awake longer," Apollo muttered under his breath, tapping his second now-empty coffee cup against the table. "Who knew the caffeine could affect the immortal as well?"

He heaved a sigh, returning his focus to the matter at hand. "This is a serious request you're making, children, I hope you know that."

"It's the only way to ensure Tessa's safety," Reese said. "And that of Olympus as well."

Apollo pressed his lips into a thin line. "Very well." He ran his fingers along the side of his laptop and produced a thin, golden flash-drive.

"What is it with immortals and flash-drives?" Tessa muttered under her breath.

"We've got a lot of things and information to keep." Apollo winked. He cleared his throat, pressed a button on the flash-drive, and in a brilliant warm flash of light, a thin golden arrow took its place.

"This," Apollo announced. "is my original arrow, from which the rest of my arrows were crafted. It is made of pure gold, fashioned from sunlight, and it has the power to either to preserve one's health when in its dormant form, or cause one's demise upon being fired into something."

"Excellent," Tessa muttered, running her eyes up and down the shaft of the golden arrow. It seemed to emanate a metallic hum as Apollo moved it, and she wondered if the hum would turn to song if fired from a bow as it should be.

Apollo sighed dreamily. "Excellent craftsmanship." He looked up from the arrow to Tessa, holding it out. "This will keep you safe against Menoetius. So long as you have it on you, nothing he can do can hurt you."

Tessa was about to ask how she could casually explain a flash-drive, much less an arrow, to Menoetius when Apollo gently touched the shaft of the arrow to the back of Tessa's hand. In another flash of light, the arrow shrunk down into a thin golden bracelet, shaped like an arrow curving around her wrist.

"It's no Curse of Achilles," Reese began, "but it'll do the trick."

Tessa looked up from the bracelet, at Reese and his father seated before her. "Thank you."

Apollo bowed his head to her. "Of course, Tessa. If I can help preserve Olympus, it is an honor to do so."

Apollo pulled Reese into some hushed conversation as he and Tessa got to their feet, and as Tessa tried not to listen, she caught one sentence that seemed to halt her in place.

"I wish I could have helped. I will personally fight for her right to Elysium."

Tessa's mind flashed back to the battle on Wall Street, to Reese's mother sacrificing herself so her son and his friends could get away. It put a heavy feeling in her heart, but she couldn't pretend to imagine the burden Reese was carrying but wouldn't acknowledge. Everyone mourned in different ways, and if Tessa knew Reese, he wouldn't until there were no more battles left to fight.

"Good luck, half-bloods," Apollo called as Reese and Tessa headed out. "And godspeed."

~~

The rest of the day seemed to slip by to Tessa's horror. Once she and Reese got back to the base, they'd found Adam had gone, knighted by Dale, Mark, and Eli as their eyes and ears in the mortal world. After that, Tessa shuttered herself away in her suite as she prepared for nightfall. Once she got her message out, she only had hours to prepare.

Reese knew the plan. Kaden knew the plan. Even if they didn't explicitly know it, Mark and Dale knew what Tessa was about to do. As decided by Tessa, the rest of the camps weren't to know the truth until forty-eight hours from now. The only way to rebuild hope was to fear that it had been gone forever.

Once she received his message as night fell, Tessa slipped out of the base. She maneuvered her way down the streets of Manhattan towards her fate, and hoped she would maintain the upper hand.

She knew what she had to do.

There was no going back.

But if she kept up the pretense and her friends kept up the plan, they could defeat Menoetius once and for all. Just play the part, and things would be fine.

Tessa repeated the plan to herself mentally as she approached the meeting place, a desolate parking garage.

Her footsteps echoed of the cinderblock walls like the beats of a dying heart. Each one felt thunderous, before fading off into a distant memory, a plea for help. Inside her chest, her own heartbeat hammered through her veins, and she willed them into compliance. Now was not the time to get cold feet.

Their rendezvous was going to be short, she knew that much. It was a quarter to midnight, the ending notes to a powerful symphony, the closing credits. Things would end after this, one way or another.

And that's what she wanted. For all of this to end.

"I see you got my message."

She stiffened, turning her head as if to glance over her shoulder. She didn't need to look to ensure that he was there, in the shadows, just like he always was.

"What can I say?" She began, cynical to a point. "You made me an offer I couldn't refuse."

He chuckled, his own footsteps like gunshots. "I have that effect sooner or later."

She took a deep breath, quelling every nerve in her body telling her to run, to go back on this. "So when do I begin?"

He was behind her now. She could feel his presence the way you could feel the looming depths of the sea while standing on the shore. There, whether you wanted to realize it or not.

"This was the right decision," He said softly, twirling a strand of her hair around his finger. She resisted a shiver of repulsion. "I hope you know that."

"If I didn't, I wouldn't be here."

"And how do I know this isn't a trick?"

"You're not bleeding out on the ground, are you?"

She could imagine his curling smile in her head. She tried to swipe the image from her head, but as if he knew, he kept it in her mind. Watching her. A permanent reminder.

"Relax, Tessa," He began in a hypnotic voice. "It'll all be over soon."

He pressed a gloved finger to the back of her neck, and suddenly, her life was flashing before her closed eyes. Those days by the sea, her mother's warm embrace, her friends at her side, a city in smolders. She could hear their cries, see their dead eyes. Gone, dragged to the depths below.

A shock rippled down her spine, and she gasped for air.

And when Tessa Brennan opened her eyes, she did not know who she was. She did not know who she had been. Instead, she only had one purpose. The purpose she'd been created for. She was a weapon, now and forevermore.

Poised and aimed to kill the man who now thought he could control her.

But Tessa was as much a part of the sea as it was a part of her.

No one could control her.

And Menoetius would find that out the hard way.