CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:
FOREIGN LAND

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THE LAST PERSON ANNAIS expected to see when she opened her eyes was the God Apollo. Forever seemed to have passed since he stomached being around the Min girls. It was no secret he'd had a soft spot for Penelope — perhaps too soft — so when she died, she took with her a piece of his arrogant, immortal heart that no one had ever gotten close enough to touch before — been allowed and welcomed to explore — and tore it to pieces.

It was because of this that Annais was sure she was seeing things. Her head was pounding in a steady rhythm, like her brain was a monster clawing at the crevices of her skull to be set free. Every inch of her body cried out in agony, as if someone had pushed her over the edge of a cliff to watch her blood spilling across jagged rock. Her eyes burned, seeing double of everything.

This had to be a dream, she thought to herself as the hazy figure of Apollo took a seat across from Ezra, tending to a particularly nasty wound on her leg. His eyes met hers over Ezra's shoulder — a stunning kaleidoscope of gold — prompting Annais to quickly angle her head away. She waited, wondering if Apollo would point out her new status of consciousness, but her name didn't ghost the man's lips, leaving a relieved sigh to fall from her own.

It wasn't that she didn't want to talk to Ezra but for once, Annais was at a complete loss for words to explain everything that was happening inside her head. She'd always known Ezra was beyond the confines of typical demigod power. All of the Min girls were, in their own ways.

Penelope was a skilled fighter learning how to master time like her Titan father when the monster in question drove his scythe into her rib cage. Penelope had always said she never understood her mum Sun-Hee Min's fascination with Kronos — that is, the charming version of the Titan he created to sway her. Sun-Hee was the eldest of the three Min children who came from Korea when they were only teenagers. She moulded herself into whatever others wanted from her — the perfect daughter, the perfect sister, the perfect student, the perfect mother. When she met Kronos, she let go. For just one night, she allowed herself to chase what she wanted, and that just so happened to be the charming older man who sought her out on a rare night out with friends. Sun-Hee felt special. Seen. Perfect for who she was, not what she tried so hard to emulate.

Three months later, that man whose name she came to learn was a lie had long disappeared, Sun-Hee's parents had died in a fatal car accident, and she was pregnant with their first grandchild. She vowed to never be imperfect again, and so Penelope paid the price beneath her suffocating idea of tough love. She was pushed into running away at fifteen and was only just mending the burnt bridge with her mum when Sun-Hee's one-night stand took everything from her for a second time. Annais only ever met her mysterious aunt once, at Penelope's funeral. Sun-Hee never acknowledged her existence.

Hea was the modern day Grim Reaper, sensing the dead or dying and fulfilling her role as Hades' eldest by assisting their restless souls in passing on. Really, it was funny how in-tune her gifts were with Annais' own. Where the younger girl saw black shadows around those about to die — not really something she saw often, but it was safe to say the impact was profound whenever she did — Hea helped guide those damned souls into the afterlife. The two sisters were like oil and water at the best of times, but they were one beating heart at the worst. Annais adored Hea. She worshipped her sister like mortals worshipped divinity.

Hea was all she had. The only person who truly understood the emptiness a parent's death could leave behind. Areum Min was the youngest daughter by six years. While Sun-Hee was continuously recreating the person she wanted everybody to love, Areum was just trying to make it to the end of each day. She'd always struggled with the darkness that lingered inside her head but it got worse when their parents died. She searched for a new purpose in life on a road-trip with her friends, and it was in the vibrancy of a random Colorado town that she met and fell pregnant to Hades. She was only twenty. Grieving but desperate to get better.

For a while, Hea was her salvation, but Areum's happiness was temporary and running on fumes when she coincidentally stumbled across her former flame several years later. He was present just long enough to meet Hea once. Then he disappeared again and Areum learned of Annais' impending arrival. This time, he never came back. Areum continued to drown in darkness until she lost sight of anything to hold onto. Four years after Annais was born, despite Hades' best attempts to guide her from the path of death, she found oblivion in the darkness and never looked back.

Then there was Ezra, who was one of the only blind demigods who remained skilled in combat. Against the odds, she took her dire circumstances and turned them into something she could work with, tuning her other senses to perfection. As the only daughter of Hera, she had underlying gifts beyond what her adopted mother passed onto her by agreeing to cover her true parentage. So where her eyes failed, she resorted to chaos, like calling to like. Melanie was just as powerful — albeit rather soft at the edges — though seeing ghosts wasn't the norm for most demigods. It was just something she got used to one day, like needing air to breathe, and wasn't something she brought up unless she desperately had to.

Both of their temperaments opposed the memory of their father, Baekhyun. He was the middle child and only son of the original Min siblings. He was always troubled, always resentful. Overshadowed by Sun-Hee's good grades and Areum's status as the precious baby of the family. A jack of all trades but a master of none. He resorted to petty crime in order to catch his parent's attention, but it soon became a necessity when his parents died and changed his access to his inheritance, leaving it in the hands of his sisters instead. Baekhyun never forgave them for it. Couldn't stand having to ask for something he believed was his right. He disappeared and, to the best of their knowledge, spent most of his time in and out of prison in the years to come.

The pieces they managed to catch of his life were never promising. His first daughter was abandoned on his doorstep only a day old — the product of a married woman catching her husband cheating and abandoning the consequences with her fling. Now they knew this was Hera, surely heartbroken and vengeful over something Zeus had done.

Then just a year later, Baekhyun's second daughter was handed over to him. Her mother was a mystery, the only woman Baekhyun had truly fallen for. But when Ezra and Mel were only toddlers, his tendency to gravitate to criminal activity like a moth to a flame landed him in hot water once again. Sun-Hee was on the other side of the country and self-absorbed enough that she would not accept his offspring into her home, and so they were given to Areum instead of the state.

Each girl was powerful but broken in their own way. Forever haunted by their parents' misgivings as they navigated their familiar paths, hopefully in opposite directions. And yet, in the thick tension of the present day, everything Annais could've possibly said died in the fiery inferno with Medea's cold corpse. Annais holding her down, hands sinking into the black shadow that appeared around her as Ezra made the killing blow, just no Hea around for the monster's demise.

A sudden harsh hitch of breath had Annais squeezing her eyes shut instinctively. The action sent an electric kind of pain shooting down into her rib-cage. She almost cried out but managed to stop herself when she heard Ezra start to speak.

"Will you watch what you're doing?"

"Oh, sorry, Your Highness," Apollo scoffed, but upon seeing the frown on Ezra's face, he sighed. His hands visibly softened as they continued to stitch up her split skin. "How about this? I'll try to be more careful if you tell me what's going on inside that head of yours."

Ezra just laughed. It was a hollow yet desperate kind of sound. "I don't need a therapist, but thanks for the offer."

Slowly, when the erratic beat or her heart had calmed down again, Annais opened her eyes to peer at the back of the girl's head.

What are you thinking? she wanted to scream at her. Genuinely, what is going on in there?

At that moment, she understood Apollo's curiosity. The only people who had truly seen what Ezra's mind was like were dead or worse, like the shock of cracking open her skull and unravelling the rotten, festering parts of her brain had sent them over an edge they couldn't come back from. Her hair was covered in specks of ash but Annais could easily pick out Penelope's pin barely holding the strands together. It was shining untouched amongst the ruins, like the silver blade had consumed the blast just to glow even brighter in the dark.

The only salvageable thing of this life they led.

Fortunately for Apollo, he knew how to take a hint. For a while, he just spoke about himself, filling the silent chasm stretching between him and Ezra with talk of a new haiku that he'd written. To give her credit, she never once complained about it, seemingly too lost in thought to really pay attention as he recited the piece of poetry to her like a priest preaching to the church pews. Annais was almost asleep again by the time the conversation suddenly sobered, like someone had poured ice cold water over the final embers of a fire burning low. Her eyes shot open to survey the two, and almost immediately she regretted it. Her head spun like a character out of an animated tv show, little stars glistening in front of her eyes. The movement prompted her hands to fall to her stomach, squeezing tight as the acidic sting of bile climbed her throat. However, before she could be forced back into Ezra's reality, Apollo was addressing the girl in question again, the sorrowful glint of his eyes a striking but welcome distraction for her cousin.

"Do you want me to heal this?" she heard him ask, and through the blur of her gaze, Annais made out the thin and irritated line that crept up the crevice of Ezra's hip bone.

Ezra's shoulders stiffened. She harshly shook her head, yanking her shirt back down her torso so that Apollo couldn't see the scar anymore.

"No," she snapped, making him frown. "Not that one."

"Well, if you just told me why, I'd stop asking..."

"You know why," she whispered. For once, her sadness was obvious, left bare regardless of prying ears. Annais didn't know how to feel. "It's all I have of her, of that night. If I let you make it disappear like it meant nothing, then what's going to stop me from ending up like her?"

Her.

Ezra might as well have slapped Apollo across the face, ripped out his heart and stomped on it. He looked wounded, raw grief making a home in his eyes, in the way he hunched over like he was finding out Penelope Min had died all over again. Annais had never asked for the details of her cousin's demise. Before her body was moved, she had caught one glimpse of the gaping wound on Penelope's chest, of the way that Ezra clutched her body in her arms like Penelope was her own personal shield, and had fled before another corpse could attach itself to her heart. Clearly, Ezra hadn't been so lucky, if she was looking at a battle scar as the only reason she was alive and breathing.

"Ez..."

"I'm tired," she suddenly declared, void of emotion. "You should check on Annais now. Eavesdropping sounds like it's hurting her a lot."

Then, before Apollo could shout for her to come back or Annais could so much as blink in surprise, Ezra scrambled to her feet and stormed out to guard the cave entrance. Annais caught a flash of a starless sky outside, dark and never-ending, before Apollo's feet planted firmly in front of her and he kneeled down with his best attempt at a charming smile.

"Long time no see, Annie," he chuckled, and Annais' eyes immediately widened. There was only one other person who used that name to taunt her.

"Leo," she gasped in a state of panic, stubbornly ignoring every ache that followed. She needed to know Jason was okay, that none of them were... "The others, are they okay? Did they get out on time? Did Jason—"

"Hey, they're alright," he quickly assured as he got to work on healing some of her shallow wounds. The internal ones would take longer but Annais watched with mild fascination as the lacerations on her arms and legs disappeared into pale bruises. "And that goes for your lover-boy too, so stop worrying. It's giving me a headache."

"I'm not — he's not—"

But no matter what she tried to say, Apollo refused to believe it. "It's okay, girl, you don't have to explain yourself to me. But I must say, I didn't take you as the type to have a crush, Annie," he cooed, one finger teasingly poking at her red face before she swatted it away. "Honestly, good on you, but don't let Aphrodite find out. The latest rumour in Olympus is that she's trying to convince Hea to let her set you up with someone..."

Annais simply sighed at that and dropped her head back against the floor, defeated. And as Apollo burst into another haiku about how good his hair looked underneath the light of the silvery moon, she knew it was going to be a long damn night.

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EZRA LOOKED LIKE ONE of Melanie's ghosts under the pale white light of the slowly rising sun. Annais found herself hesitating at the cave entrance at the sight of her sickly expression, something that Apollo wasn't too pleased with when he almost ran right into Annais' back. Grumbling to himself, he followed her gaze and shook his head, a sour glower tugging at the corner of his mouth. He tried to nudge her forward but Annais refused to move. Once again, she found herself not knowing what to say. 'Hey Ezra, thanks for saving my life' seemed to fall short, but 'Hey Ezra, I'm so incredibly sorry for the way I've been treating you, I just felt abandoned when I needed you most' felt too vulnerable of a statement to let out into the world. So she stayed quiet, sneering at Apollo until he sighed and gave in.

"You know, Penelope wouldn't want you two acting like this," he said before he could stop himself. Almost immediately, he seemed to regret it, but it was too late now. He couldn't take back Penelope's name, nor could he change the pained grimace on Annais' face or the shattered slump of Ezra's shoulders. So he forced himself to run with it, clearing his throat in a rare display of anxiety. "Look, I don't know what's going on with you two. I won't lie, I don't care too much for your demigod drama. But I knew Pen once, and you two, and Hea and Mel, you meant the world and more to her. So whatever this is, it really needs to stop. You won't be getting to the Bay Area if you don't work together. And be honest. I love me some truth."

Annais raised a skeptical brow at the man. "The Bay Area?"

She wasn't going to address anything else he said, and from the looks of it, neither was Ezra. As Apollo handed the latter a bronze compass with the hands erratically spinning, she took it without so much as a word, her sunglasses unable to block out the purple rings beneath her eyes. She was tired. They both were. Annais was sure she would have slept for days if they didn't have the Winter Solstice as their countdown. They'd have to push on until they were back with Jason again. And the others.

"Well, that's where your lover boy is," he shrugged.

Instinctively, Annais scowled at him. "Jason's not my lover boy, Apollo."

Ezra managed a smirk as Apollo threw his head back in a laugh. "To my knowledge, there's two boys on your quest, am I correct? So how did you know I was referring to Jason Grace?"

Annais bristled like a cat doused in water. "Shut up," she hissed, and crossed her twinging arms over her chest. Most of the pain was gone now. She could breathe properly again and the bleeding had stopped, but a bunch of bruises and aches still remained. They could only fade away with some time. "So how do we find them then?"

"Jeez Louise, do I have to explain everything to you Mins?" he rolled his flickering golden eyes. When Annais and Ezra just frowned at him, he huffed. "I gave Ezra a compass for a reason, didn't I? If my calculations are right, it should guide you right to them."

"Should?" Ezra echoed with evident skepticism.

But where any other God would've gotten offended by her doubt, Apollo chuckled knowingly. "Do you doubt me, Ez?"

"Most of the time, yeah."

"Wow, I'm so offended."

"You really sound it."

"Look, I hate to break up whatever this is," Annais drawled. "But we should be going. We're running out of time."

The air grew tense at the reminder. For a moment, the three of them just stood there, Ezra fiddling with her hairpin while Apollo watched her with sadness in his eyes. Annais wasn't an idiot. She knew they were close like siblings. Penelope's love had bonded them forever, and regardless of the jokes that Apollo made or Ezra's natural snarkiness, the two would always care for each other deeply. It was hard for Apollo to let her go now, to trust that he wasn't about to lose three more Mins — but especially Ezra — in a matter of days. So Annais decided to give them a minute alone, shooting one last meaningful glance in Apollo's direction before heading over to where Eddie was waiting for them to depart.

According to the Sun God, Ezra had said that the pegasus saved their lives. Flying in as Ezra pushed them over the edge of the fourth floor, he'd caught them and followed Festus' shadow just as the whole building erupted like a volcano. They'd lost sight of Festus in the smoke, forcing Eddie to take initiative as both Ezra and Annais passed out, flying off in the opposite direction. It wasn't often that Annais found herself appreciating the stupid horse but she took a second to scratch the top of his head and hand him an apple that Apollo had tried to force-feed her under the 'an apple a day keeps the doctor away' saying. He had it chewed up in a blink, stomping his hoof on the rocky ground just as Apollo disappeared and Ezra marched up to them, her brows set in a determined line. She didn't cry, but then again, Annais could count on one hand the amount of times Ezra Min had ever cried around someone who wasn't Percy, Annabeth or Penelope.

"Are you ready to go?" she asked, a strange twinge of nervousness in her voice. At the confused silence that followed, she swallowed thickly and added, stronger this time, "I thought you said we didn't have all day. Hurry up."

Already mounting Eddie's back, Annais hastily replied, "Yeah. Let's get the hell out of here."

Jason Grace was out there somewhere and she was determined to find him. The others, too. Oh, why did she keep on forgetting about them?

She helped Ezra up behind her, connected her tether to Annais' belt, then dug her feet into Eddie's sides to urge him up into the sky. The sudden height was jarring for Annais. It felt like forever had passed since she and the others were crammed onto Festus' back. She didn't miss it, but part of her longed for that moment again. To not feel quite so alone. So she urged Eddie to move faster, eyes locked on the slowing spin of the compass' hands. 

Not long now, she thought to herself. Just keep going.

But time was definitely not on their side. Eddie flew as fast as he could, wings beating heavily against the rising wind. Annais had a feeling that wherever he was out there, Apollo was trying to help them, guiding them along faster than normal. Eddie was nowhere near as fast as Festus had been, but he made good pace, and Annais started to hope that they'd have at least gotten close by midday.

Then, as per their horrible luck, something changed.

Annais could feel a sickening foreboding sense that somewhere out there, everything was going horribly wrong. The sunlight suddenly faded into a cold, grey slate of clouds. The wind picked up, sending chills down their spines that were only made worse when the iciness that was almost tangible in the air turned into literal snow. Both girls gripped onto their jackets with chattering teeth, urging Eddie forward despite his whines of protest. If they stopped now, the Winter Solstice would arrive and the Min girls would've failed their quest. Then they'd all be screwed.

"Do you think someone's trying to stop us?" Ezra shouted over the roar of the wind. At some point, her hands had wrapped themselves around Annais' stomach, holding on tight as Eddie swayed left and right.

Annais knew what she meant. There was only one Goddess who controlled snow like this. "Yes. And I think I know who."

"I'm gonna kill her."

"Not if I kill her first."

It was so bad that Annais couldn't see the compass anymore. She just hoped they were going in the right direction, that Eddie had a better sense of direction than she did in that moment. Time continued to trickle by. It might've been midday now, it might've been midnight. She couldn't be sure.

But things only kept getting worse. Her hands had gone numb, tinged blue, and she was confident the pressure of Ezra's hands had caused one of the wounds on her back to reopen. Eddie was starting to slow, his whines louder as ice crept along his wings. Annais knew what they had to do, but she didn't want to accept it. Jason was so close yet so far out of reach.

"What do we do?" she called out when Eddie's latest whines got a bit too hard to tolerate.

Ezra sighed in her ear. "I don't know, but my ass is numb. We need shelter."

But before Annais could even think to guide Eddie down, the snow made the decision for them. One second, they were swaying, carried by the wind like violent waves were washing them towards the shore of a beach. The next second, Eddie was shrieking, tipping backwards, and they were falling, falling, falling...

"Ezra!" Annais screamed, reaching for the girl's hand. Above them, she could see Eddie righting himself, but the damage had already been done. "Ezra, hold on."

The impact against the ground felt like someone had taken a knife and stabbed her right through. She'd tried to shadow travel but there were no shadows in sight with white being all she could see. So instead, the two girls flickered through the air, then hit the ground like sacks of bricks. Beneath her shoulder, Annais heard a crunch, and for a second, she feared she'd broken something. But rolling over onto her knees was painless, as was reaching for Ezra through the chaos.

"What was that?" she called out, but the girl just shook her head in confusion, having not picked up on the sound.

"Come on," she urged instead, trying to tug Annais onto her feet. "We need to find a cave or something."

But Annais wasn't done yet. Something had broken, and she had a horrible feeling she knew what it was. "No," she gasped as her fingers ghosted across fragmented bronze.

"Annais, don't make me drag you," Ezra snapped, but Annais pushed her away as she attempted to hook her hands beneath her shoulders.

"Ezra, the compass," she moaned, tears pricking in her eyes. She wasn't sure what they were from — the weather or the sheer disappointment settling in her gut — but they trailed down her face and almost immediately froze into icy trails of water on her skin. "I broke it."

"That doesn't matter right now," she huffed, but both girls knew that it did. "We won't even be alive to find them if we don't hurry up."

Reluctantly, Annais pushed herself to her feet, lacing Ezra's fingers with her own. There was no warmth from the touch but Annais was grateful to have it as she warred against the snow, wading further and further as the first signs of a cave sharpened into focus just a yard away.

"We're close," she murmured, though Ezra made no sound that she heard her.

Behind them, Eddie flew down low and feebly followed them, sighing to himself as they finally reached the mouth of the cave and hurried inside. A fire was burning low in the corner, providing the tiniest bit of warmth to unfreeze their skin as Annais immediately set to work on fixing it up.

"Where do you think we are?" Ezra asked through her shudders.

"I don't know," said Annais. "We were so close before Khione got in the way. If I could just get back to—"

"To who? Jason?"

Jason Grace.

Annais didn't get it. Every bit of determination she felt led her right back to him. She missed his stupid smile and the stupid way he messed with his hair when he got shy. She missed the stupid comfort of his hand in hers, their proximity on the dragon. Everything. Of course she worried for the others, but she knew deep down that no matter how many times she said it, her mind would always drift to him first.

"I don't know," she sighed when Ezra made an expectant noise. "I guess."

"You like him?"

"No," Annais immediately scoffed. Then why did her heart burn like this? "Maybe. Love is stupid anyways, so it doesn't matter."

Hades, kill her now. Why was she telling Ezra of all people this? She'd never let her live it down. But much to her surprise, Ezra's curiosity seemed genuine. She laughed at Annais' response, shaking her head softly as she said, "I think you're bullshitting, but don't worry. I'll get you back to your lover boy."

"How?" she said miserably. "I broke the compass, remember?"

"Because I'm here."

The new voice had Ezra gripping her bracelet and transforming it into a scythe, and Annais reaching for her own sword. But in the end, they needn't have worried. Emerging through the darkness with snow sprinkled through her black hair was Hea Min.

"Hello, little sisters."