¹Royal Cries, p. jackson

Epilogue

ROYAL CRIES
━━ epilogue

━━ THE SUMMER SESSION for Camp Half-Blood went late that year. It lasted two more weeks, right up to the start of a new school year, and Elisa had to admit, those weeks were the best two weeks of her life.

               Grover had taken over the satyr seekers and was sending them out across the world to find unclaimed half-bloods. So far, the gods had kept their promise. New demigods were popping up all over the place—not just in America, but in a lot of other countries as well.

               Elisa struggled to believe the camp she was in now was the one she had arrived at a year and a half ago. There had only been twelve cabins then, but now so many were being built that the U-shape would soon be a complete rectangle. It was going so well that Annabeth and Chiron were talking about adding an entirely new wing of cabins just so they could have enough room.

               Nico had some undead builders working on the Hades Cabin. Even though he was still the only kid in it, it was going to look pretty cool—solid obsidian walls with a skull over the door and torches that burned with green fire twenty-four hours a day. Elisa told him to make it less depressing but the son of Hades insisted as that was 'the aesthetic of Hades, Lord of the Dead.' Next to that were the cabins of Iris, Nemesis, Hecate, and several others Elisa didn't recognize.

               The Hermes Cabin was a lot less crowded now, because most of the unclaimed kids had received signs from their godly parents. It happened almost every night, and every night more demigods straggled over the property line with the satyr guides, usually with some nasty monsters pursuing them, but almost all of them made it through.

               Nico nudged Elisa, pointing back to the list in his hands. He was talking to her about last-minute things for Cabin Thirteen, the cabin for his father.

               Elisa rolled her eyes. "I hate the fact you're painting the cabin black."

               "The cabins are supposed to be representative of our parents, Elisa!" said Nico. "Black is the color of death."

               "And being surrounded by so many dark colors will make your depression worse," added Elisa. "You don't need anything to make you more depressed."

               Nico flushed. "I'm not depressed."

               The daughter of Dionysus gave him a look. "If you're not depressed," she said, "I'm not into girls."

               Nico scowled and marked out something on the list. "The cabins' already half-painted, I'm not making them repaint it."

               "I can't wait until you're out of your emo phase," Elisa admitted with a shake of her head.

               Nico gave her a blank look. "What's emo?"

               She patted him on the shoulder sympathetically. "I still have a lot to teach you. Hey—tonight, Cabin Twelve, and I'll play some of my Paramore and My Chemical Romance CDs for you."

               "What's Paramore?" he asked innocently. "My Chemical Romance?"

               Elisa groaned loudly. She forgot Nico wasn't from her time and had spent seventy years trapped in Lotus Hotel and Casino.

               Nico stopped asking questions after that, busying himself with writing more things on the paper he would give Annabeth. Elisa watched him, wondering what else he was behind on. He was born in the 1940s, in Italy, and raised Catholic. Surely, he had been pretty sheltered, Elisa had met plenty of Catholics to know that.