NEVER BE THE SAME . . . percy jackson

forty seven: the amazons.

BROOKLYN CONSIDERED MAKING a run for it.

She didn't trust Queen Hylla, and she certainly didn't trust that other lady, Otrera. Only three guards were left in the room. All of them kept their distance.

Hylla was armed with just a dagger. Despite being underground, Brooklyn could cause some damage. She's Brooklyn Hayward, after all.

Unfortunately, she'd seen the Amazons fight. Even though the queen had only a dagger, Brooklyn suspected she could use it pretty well. And Brooklyn was unarmed. Her vision was tinged at the edges with that black and white world she saw with the red lines that seemed strangely perfectly lined up. Maybe it was just an Amazon thing.

The queen seemed to be reading her thoughts. "Forget about escape. Of course, we'd respect you for trying. But we'd have to kill you."

"Thanks for the warning," Brooklyn drawled, though she was serious.

Hylla shrugged. "The least I can do. I believe you come in peace. I believe Reyna sent you."

"But you won't help?"

The queen studied the necklace she'd taken from Percy, the one that Brooklyn had fiddled with a couple of times while he'd been sleeping, trying to remember what those beads meant. "It's complicated," Hylla said. "Amazons have always had a rocky relationship with other demigods — especially male demigods. We fought for King Priam in the Trojan War, but Achilles killed our queen, Penthesilea. Years before that, Hercules stole Queen Hippolyta's belt — this belt I'm wearing. It took us centuries to recover it. Long before that, at the very beginning of the Amazon nation, a hero named Bellerophon killed our first queen, Otrera."

"You mean the lady—"

"—who just left, yes. Otrera, our first queen, daughter of Ares."

"Mars?" Hazel frowned.

Hylla made a sour face. "No, definitely Ares. Otrera lived long before Rome, in a time when all demigods were Greek. Unfortunately, some of our warriors still prefer the old ways. Children of Ares . . . they are always the worst."

"The old ways . . ." Hazel glanced at Brooklyn, who shrugged, her head swimming with information that she couldn't access. "You mean the Amazons are a mix . . . Greek and Roman?"

Hylla continued to examine the necklace — the clay beads, the probatio tablets. She slipped Reyna's silver ring off the cord and put it on her own finger. "I suppose they don't teach you about that at Camp Jupiter. The gods have many aspects. Mars, Ares. Pluto, Hades. Jupiter, Zeus. Being immortal, they tend to accumulate personalities. They are Greek, Roman, American — a combination of all the cultures they've influenced over the eons. Do you understand?"

Brooklyn nodded, but Hazel said, "I — I'm not sure. Are all Amazons demigods?"

The queen spread her hands. "We all have some immortal blood, but many of my warriors are descended from demigods. Some have been Amazons for countless generations. Others are children of minor gods. Kinzie, the one who brought you here, is the daughter of a nymph. Ah — here she is now."

The girl with the auburn hair approached the queen and bowed.

"The prisoners are safely locked away," Kinzie reported. "But . . ."

"Yes?" the queen asked.

Kinzie swallowed like she had a bad taste in her mouth. "Otrera made sure her followers are guarding the cells. I'm sorry, my queen."

Hylla pursed her lips. "No matter. Stay with us, Kinzie. We were just talking about our, ah, situation."

"Otrera," Hazel guessed. "Gaea brought her back from the dead to throw you Amazons into civil war."