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I got . . . weirder. I don't know. None of those things should have mattered, but I guess they did. I guess they were like water. Soft and harmless until enough time went by. Then all of a sudden you found yourself with the Grand Canyon on your hands.
Carol Rifka Brunt / Tell the Wolves I'm Home
The choice presented to you when you first arrive on the other side of the Tiber, not yet Roman, is an easy one to make.
It says: you are tired. Broken. Bruised. Your eyes are so heavy they're burning. Your shirt is torn and your hands are caked with dirt. Welcome to Rome. Here, everyone is like you. We have all been running since the day we were born. Running from monsters and running from the mortality sloshing in our veins like poison. We have food and a warm bed. You have a place with us. What do you choose?
It's stupid, really, to not choose Rome. Bowie knows at that moment they all realize anything else is a death sentence. Even if that choice, in hindsight, is not a choice in its true form. Once you're inducted into the army, you belong to Rome, to Olympus. You have to fight in the war. She thinks that's where the choice should lie, but it didn't for her, and it doesn't for anyone else, and running away after you've chosen Rome is just as much of a death sentence as doing it before.
Maybe they don't really choose Rome at all. Maybe Rome chooses them.
Rome is the space between your fingers. Rome is family. Rome is blood. Bloodshed. Family. War. Idly, Bowie lists these in her head, crossing each off. There are no words that quite sum up what Rome is, and she knows a lot of words. She thinks she could write a paragraph, an essay, a short story, or a novel, and an outsider still would not be able to imagine the reality of what Rome is. Rome is not a thing you conquer, and putting it into words would do that.
Rome is not a thing you conquer.
When the first camper goes missing, nobody bats an eye, because this is the truth they've been brought up with. It must have been a monster or an angry god. The second camper to disappear is a child of Bacchus. Their absence is felt. But it isn't that much of a jarring occurrence. This goes on for a month, and then Reyna notices that fewer and fewer demigods have been trickling in to join the ranks. They've had no new recruits for a week. This isn't normal.
A few people are interrogated. Octavian consults the Auguries. He says, "they've signed their death sentence. They're defecting." Where are they? "East."
Momentarily, Bowie is proud of these demigods. They're running towards the place Romans can't follow. Won't follow. It still isn't a choice. It's something. Not what they'd have in a perfect world. But something. With summer fast arriving, Bowie is sent to New York with Jason and Octavian to do three things:
